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Of the Brethren who settled in the valley of Kunwald the greater number were country peasants and tradesmen of humble rank. But already the noble and mighty were pressing in. As the eyes of Gregory closed in death, a new party was rising to power. Already the Brethren were strong in numbers, and already they were longing to snap the fetters that Gregory had placed upon their feet. From Neustadt in the North to Skutch in the South, and from Chlumec in the West to Kunwald in the East, they now lay thickly sprinkled; and in all the principal towns of that district, an area of nine hundred square miles, they were winning rich and influential members. In came the University dons; in came the aldermen and knights. In came, above all, a large colony of Waldenses, who had immigrated from the Margravate of Brandenburg {1480.}. Some settled at Fulneck, in Moravia, others at Landskron, in Bohemia; and now, by their own request, they were admitted to the Brethren’s Church.[16] For a while the Brethren held to the rule that if a nobleman joined their Church he must first lay down his rank. But now that rule was beginning to gall and chafe. They were winning golden opinions on every hand; they were becoming known as the best men for positions of trust in the State; they were just the men to make the best magistrates and aldermen; and thus they felt forced by their very virtues to renounce the narrow ideas of Peter and to play their part in national and city life.

At this moment, when new ideas were budding, there entered the service of the Church a young man who is known as Luke of Prague. He was born about 1460, was a Bachelor of Prague University, was a well-read theological scholar, and for fifty years was the trusted leader of the Brethren. Forthwith he read the signs of the times, and took the tide at the flood. In Procop of Neuhaus, another graduate, he found a warm supporter. The two scholars led the van of the new movement. The struggle was fierce. On the one side was the “great party” of culture, led by Luke of Prague and Procop of Neuhaus; on the other the so-called “little party,” the old-fashioned rigid Radicals, led by two farmers, Amos and Jacob. “Ah, Matthias,” said Gregory the Patriarch, on his death-bed, “beware of the educated Brethren!” But, despite this warning, the educated Brethren won the day. For once and for ever the Brethren resolved that the writings of Peter and Gregory should no longer be regarded as binding. At a Synod held at Reichenau they rejected the authority of Peter entirely {1494.}. They agreed that nobles might join the Church without laying down their rank; they agreed that if a man’s business were honest he might make profits therein; they agreed that Brethren might enter the service of the State; and they even agreed that oaths might be taken in cases of special need.[17] And then, next year, they made their position still clearer {1495.}. Instead of taking Peter as their guide, they now took the Bible and the Bible alone. “We content ourselves,” they solemnly declared, at another Synod held at Reichenau, “with those sacred books which have been accepted from of old by all Christians, and are found in the Bible”; and thus, forty years before John Calvin, and eighty years before the Lutherans, they declared that the words of Holy Scripture, apart from any disputed interpretation, should be their only standard of faith and practice. No longer did they honour the memory of Peter; no longer did they appeal to him in their writings; no longer, in a word, can we call the Brethren the true followers of Peter of Chelcic. Instead, henceforward, of regarding Peter as the founder of their Church, they began now to regard themselves as the disciples of Hus. In days gone by they had spoken of Hus as a “causer of war.” Now they held his name and memory sacred; and from this time onward the real followers of Peter were, not the Brethren, but the “little party” led by Amos and Jacob.[18] But the scholars led the Brethren further still. If the reader will kindly refer to the chapter on Peter, he will see that that racy pamphleteer had far more to say about good works than about the merits of saving faith; but now, after years of keen discussion, Procop of Neuhaus put to the Council of Elders the momentous question: “By what is a man justified?” The answer given was clear: “By the merits of Jesus Christ.” The great doctrine of justification by grace was taught; the old doctrine of justification by works was modified; and thus the Brethren’s Church became the first organized Evangelical Church in Europe.[19] And Luke designed to make her the strongest, too. His energy never seemed to flag. As he wished to establish the ministry more firmly, he had the number of Bishops enlarged, and became a Bishop himself. He enlarged the governing Council, with his friend Procop of Neuhaus as Ecclesiastical Judge. He beautified the Church Services, and made the ritual more ornate. He introduced golden communion cups and delicately embroidered corporals, and some of the Brethren actually thought that he was leading them back to Rome. He gave an impulse to Church music, encouraged reading both in Priests and in people, and made a use of the printing press which in those days was astounding. Of the five printing presses in all Bohemia, three belonged to the Brethren; of sixty printed works that appeared between 1500 and 1510, no fewer than fifty were published by the Brethren; and of all the scribes of the sixteenth century, Luke was the most prolific. He wrote a “Catechism for Children.” He edited the first Brethren’s hymn book (1501), the first Church hymnal in history. He published a commentary on the Psalms, another on the Gospel of St. John, and another on the eleventh chapter of 1 Corinthians; he drew up “Confessions of Faith,” and sent them to the King; and thus, for the first time in the history of Bohemia, he made the newly invented press a mighty power in the land.

And even with this the good Bishop was not content {1491.}. If the Brethren, thought he, were true to their name, they must surely long for fellowship with others of like mind with themselves. For this purpose Luke and his friends set off to search for Brethren in other lands. Away went one to find the pure Nestorian Church that was said to exist in India, got as far as Antioch, Jerusalem and Egypt, and, being misled somehow by a Jew, returned home with the wonderful notion that the River Nile flowed from the Garden of Eden, but with no more knowledge of the Church in India than when he first set out. Another explored the South of Russia, and the third sought Christians in Turkey. And Luke himself had little more success. He explored a number of Monasteries in Greece, came on to Rome {1498.}, saw the streets of the city littered with corpses of men murdered by Cæsar Borgia, picked up some useful information about the private character of the Pope, saw Savonarola put to death in Florence, fell in with a few Waldenses in the Savoy, and then, having sought for pearls in vain, returned home in a state of disgust, and convinced that, besides the Brethren, there was not to be found a true Christian Church on the face of God’s fair earth. He even found fault with the Waldenses.

It was time, indeed, for Luke to return, for trouble was brewing at home. For some years there dwelt in the town of Jungbunzlau, the headquarters of the Brethren’s Church, a smart young man, by name John Lezek. He began life as a brewer’s apprentice; he then entered the service of a Brother, and learned a good deal of the Brethren’s manners and customs; and now he saw the chance of turning his knowledge to good account. If only he told a good tale against the Brethren, he would be sure to be a popular hero. For this purpose he visited the parish priest, and confessed to a number of abominations committed by him while among the wicked Brethren. The parish priest was delighted; the penitent was taken to the Church; and there he told the assembled crowd the story of his guilty past. Of all the bad men in the country, he said, these Brethren were the worst. He had even robbed his own father with their consent and approval. They blasphemed. They took the Communion bread to their houses, and there hacked it in pieces. They were thieves, and he himself had committed many a burglary for them. They murdered men and kidnapped their wives. They had tried to blow up Rockycana in the Thein Church with gunpowder. They swarmed naked up pillars like Adam and Eve, and handed each other apples. They prepared poisonous drinks, and put poisonous smelling powders in their letters. They were skilled in witchcraft, worshipped Beelzebub, and were wont irreverently to say that the way to Hell was paved with the bald heads of priests. As this story was both alarming and lively, the parish priest had it taken down, sealed and signed by witnesses, copied out, and scattered broadcast through the land. In vain John Lezek confessed soon after, when brought by the Brethren before a Magistrate, that his whole story was a vile invention. If a man tells a falsehood and then denies it, he does not thereby prevent the falsehood from spreading.

For now a more powerful foe than Lezek made himself felt in the land. Of all the Popes that ever donned the tiara, Alexander VI. is said to have presented the most successful image of the devil.[20] He was the father of the prince of poisoners, Caesar Borgia; he was greedy, immoral, fond of ease and pleasure; he was even said to be a poisoner himself. If a well-known man died suddenly in Rome, the common people took it for granted that the Pope had poisoned his supper. For all that he was pious enough in a way of his own; and now, in his zeal for the Catholic cause, he took stern measures against the Church of the Brethren. He had heard some terrible tales about them. He heard that Peter’s pamphlet, “The Antichrist,”[21] was read all over the country. He heard that the number of the Brethren now was over 100,000. He resolved to crush them to powder {Papal Bull, Feb. 4th, 1500.}. He sent an agent, the Dominican, Dr. Henry Institoris, as censor of the press. As soon as Institoris arrived on the scene, he heard, to his horror, that most of the Brethren could read; and thereupon he informed the Pope that they had learned this art from the devil. He revived the stories of Lezek, the popular feeling was fanned to fury, and wire-pullers worked on the tender heart of the King.

“Hunt out and destroy these shameless vagabonds,” wrote Dr. Augustin Käsebrot to King Uladislaus, “they are not even good enough to be burnt at the stake. They ought to have their bodies torn by wild beasts and their blood licked up by dogs.” For the last five years there had grown in the land a small sect known as Amosites. They were followers of old Farmer Amos; they had once belonged to the Brethren; they had broken off when the scholars had won the day, and now they sent word to the King to say that the Brethren were planning to defend their cause with the sword. “What!” said the King, “do they mean to play Ziska? Well, well! We know how to stop that!” They were worse than Turks, he declared; they believed neither in God nor in the Communion; they were a set of lazy vagabonds. He would soon pay them out for their devilish craft, and sweep them off the face of the earth. And to this end he summoned the Diet, and, by the consent of all three Estates, issued the famous Edict of St. James {July 25th, 1508.}.[22] The decree was sweeping and thorough. The meetings of the Brethren, public and private, were forbidden. The books and writings of the Brethren must be burnt. All in Bohemia who refused to join the Utraquist or Roman Catholic Church were to be expelled from the country; all nobles harbouring Brethren were to be fined, and all their priests and teachers were to be imprisoned.

The persecution began. In the village of Kuttenburg lived a brother, by name Andrew Poliwka. As Kuttenburg was a Romanist village, he fled for refuge to the Brethren’s settlement at Leitomischl. But his wife betrayed him. He returned to the village, and, desiring to please her, he attended the parish Church.

The occasion was an installation service. As the sermon ended and the host was raised, he could hold his tongue no longer. “Silence, Parson Jacob,” he cried to the priest, “you have babbled enough! Mine hour is come; I will speak. Dear friends,” he continued, turning to the people, “what are you doing? What are you adoring? An idol made of bread! Oh! Adore the living God in heaven! He is blessed for evermore!” The priest ordered him to hold his peace. He only shrieked the louder. He was seized, his head was dashed against the pillar, and he was dragged bleeding to prison. Next day he was tried, and asked to explain why he had interrupted the service.

“Who caused Abram,” he answered, “to forsake his idolatry and adore the living God? Who induced Daniel to flee from idols?” In vain was he stretched upon the rack. No further answer would he give. He was burnt to death at the stake. As the flames began to lick his face, he prayed aloud: “Jesus, Thou Son of the living God, have mercy upon me, miserable sinner.”

At Strakonic dwelt the Brother George Wolinsky, a dependent of Baron John of Rosenberg {1509.}. The Baron was a mighty man. He was Grand Prior of the Knights of Malta; he was an orthodox subject of the King, and he determined that on his estate no villainous Picards[23] should live. “See,” he said one day to George, “I have made you a servant in the Church. You must go to Church. You are a Picard, and I have received instructions from Prague that all men on my estate must be either Utraquists or Catholics.”

The Brother refused; the Baron insisted; and the Prior of Strakonic was brought to convert the heretic. “No one,” said the Prior, “should ever be tortured into faith. The right method is reasonable instruction, and innocent blood always cries to Heaven, ‘Lord, Lord, when wilt Thou avenge me.'”

But this common sense was lost on the furious Baron. As Brother George refused to yield, the Baron cast him into the deepest dungeon of his castle. The bread and meat he had secreted in his pockets were removed. The door of the dungeon was barred, and all that was left for the comfort of his soul was a heap of straw whereon to die and a comb to do his hair. For five days he lay in the dark, and then the Baron came to see him. The prisoner was almost dead. His teeth were closed; his mouth was rigid; the last spark of life was feebly glimmering. The Baron was aghast. The mouth was forced open, hot soup was poured in, the prisoner revived, and the Baron burst into tears.

“Ah,” he exclaimed, “I am glad he is living”; and allowed George to return to his Brethren.

Amid scenes like this, Bishop Luke was a tower of strength to his Brethren. For six years the manses were closed, the Churches empty, the Pastors homeless, the people scattered; and the Bishop hurried from glen to glen, held services in the woods and gorges, sent letters to the parishes he could not visit, and pleaded the cause of his Brethren in woe in letter after letter to the King. As the storm of persecution raged, he found time to write a stirring treatise, entitled, “The Renewal of the Church,” and thus by pen and by cheery word he revived the flagging hope of all.

For a while the Brethren were robbed of this morsel of comfort. As the Bishop was hastening on a pastoral visit, he was captured by Peter von Suda, the brigand, “the prince and master of all thieves,” was loaded with chains, cast into a dungeon, and threatened with torture and the stake. At that moment destruction complete and final seemed to threaten the Brethren. Never had the billows rolled so high; never had the breakers roared so loud; and bitterly the hiding Brethren complained that their leaders had steered them on the rocks.

Yet sunshine gleamed amid the gathering clouds. For some time there had been spreading among the common people a conviction that the Brethren were under the special protection of God, and that any man who tried to harm them would come to a tragic end. It was just while the Brethren were sunk in despair that several of their enemies suddenly died, and people said that God Himself had struck a blow for the persecuted “Pitmen.” The great Dr. Augustin, their fiercest foe, fell dead from his chair at dinner. Baron Colditz, the Chancellor, fell ill of a carbuncle in his foot, and died. Baron Henry von Neuhaus, who had boasted to the King how many Brethren he had starved to death, went driving in his sleigh, was upset, and was skewered on his own hunting knife. Baron Puta von Swihow was found dead in his cellar. Bishop John of Grosswardein fell from his carriage, was caught on a sharp nail, had his bowels torn out, and miserably perished. And the people, struck with awe, exclaimed: “Let him that is tired of life persecute the Brethren, for he is sure not to live another year.”

Thus the Brethren possessed their souls in patience till the persecution ended. The King of Bohemia, Uladislaus II., died {March 13th, 1516.}. His successor was only a boy. The Utraquists and Catholics began to quarrel with each other. The robber, von Suda, set Luke at liberty. The great Bishop became chief Elder of the Church. The whole land was soon in a state of disorder. The barons and knights were fighting each other, and, in the general stress and storm, the quiet Brethren were almost forgotten and allowed to live in peace.

And just at this juncture came news from afar that seemed to the Brethren like glad tidings from Heaven {1517.}. No longer were the Brethren to be alone, no longer to be a solitary voice crying in the wilderness. As the Brethren returned from the woods and mountains, and worshipped once again by the light of day, they heard, with amazement and joy, how Martin Luther, on Hallows Eve, had pinned his famous ninety-five Theses to the Church door at Wittenberg. The excitement in Bohemia was intense. For a while it seemed as though Martin Luther would wield as great an influence there as ever he had in Germany. For a while the Utraquist priests themselves, like Rockycana of yore, thundered in a hundred pulpits against the Church of Rome; and Luther, taking the keenest interest in the growing movement, wrote a letter to the Bohemian Diet, and urged the ecclesiastical leaders in Prague to break the last fetters that bound them to Rome.

For a while his agent, Gallus Cahera, a butcher’s son, who had studied at Wittenberg, was actually pastor of the Thein Church {1523-9.}, referred in his sermons to the “celebrated Dr. Martin Luther,” and openly urged the people to pray for that “great man of God.” For a while even a preacher of the Brethren, named Martin, was allowed to stand where Hus had stood, and preach in the Bethlehem Church. For a while, in a word, it seemed to the Brethren that the Reformation now spreading in Germany would conquer Bohemia at a rush. The great Luther was loved by many classes. He was loved by the Utraquists because he had burned the Pope’s Bull. He was loved by the young because he favoured learning. He was loved by the Brethren because he upheld the Bible as the standard of faith {1522.}. As soon as Luther had left the Wartburg, the Brethren boldly held out to him the right hand of fellowship; sent two German Brethren, John Horn and Michael Weiss, to see him; presented him with a copy of their Confession and Catechism; began a friendly correspondence on various points of doctrine and discipline, and thus opened their hearts to hear with respect what the great Reformer had to say.

Amid these bright prospects Luke of Prague breathed his last {Dec. 11th, 1528.}. As Gregory the Patriarch had gone to his rest when a new party was rising among the Brethren, so Luke of Prague crossed the cold river of death when new ideas from Germany were stirring the hearts of his friends. He was never quite easy in his mind about Martin Luther. He still believed in the Seven Sacraments. He still believed in the Brethren’s system of stern moral discipline. He still believed, for practical reasons, in the celibacy of the clergy. “This eating,” he wrote, “this drinking, this self-indulgence, this marrying, this living to the world—what a poor preparation it is for men who are leaving Babylon. If a man does this he is yoking himself with strangers. Marriage never made anyone holy yet. It is a hindrance to the higher life, and causes endless trouble.” Above all, he objected to Luther’s way of teaching the great doctrine of justification by faith.

“Never, never,” he said, in a letter to Luther, “can you ascribe a man’s salvation to faith alone. The Scriptures are against you. You think that in this you are doing a good work, but you are really fighting against Christ Himself and clinging to an error.” He regarded Luther’s teaching as extreme and one-sided. He was shocked by what he heard of the jovial life led by Luther’s students at Wittenberg, and could never understand how a rollicking youth could be a preparation for a holy ministry. As Gregory the Patriarch had warned Matthias against “the learned Brethren,” so Luke, in his turn, now warned the Brethren against the loose lives of Luther’s merry-hearted students; and, in order to preserve the Brethren’s discipline, he now issued a comprehensive treatise, divided into two parts—the first entitled “Instructions for Priests,” and the second “Instructions and Admonitions for all occupations, all ages in life, all ranks and all sorts of characters.” As he lay on his death-bed at Jungbunzlau, his heart was stirred by mingled feelings. There was land in sight—ah, yes!—but what grew upon the enchanting island? He would rather see his Church alone and pure than swept away in the Protestant current. Happy was he in the day of his death. So far he had steered the Church safely. He must now resign his post to another pilot who knew well the coming waters.

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But the cause of the Brethren’s Church was not yet lost. As the Brethren fled before the blast, it befell, in the wonderful providence of God, that all their best and noblest qualities—their broadness of view, their care for the young, their patience in suffering, their undaunted faith—shone forth in undying splendour in the life and character of one great man; and that man was the famous John Amos Comenius, the pioneer of modern education and the last Bishop of the Bohemian Brethren. He was born on March 18th, 1592, at Trivnitz, a little market town in Moravia. He was only six years old when he lost his parents through the plague. He was taken in hand by his sister, and was educated at the Brethren’s School at Ungarisch-Brod. As he soon resolved to become a minister, he was sent by the Brethren to study theology, first at the Calvinist University of Herborn in Nassau, and then at the Calvinist University of Heidelberg. For two years (1614-1616) he then acted as master in the Brethren’s Higher School at Prerau, and then became minister of the congregation at Fulneck. There, too, the Brethren had a school; and there, both as minister and teacher, Comenius, with his young wife and family, was as happy as the livelong day. But his happiness was speedily turned to misery. The Thirty Years’ War broke out. What part he took in the Bohemian Revolution we have no means of knowing. He certainly favoured the election of Frederick, and helped his cause in some way. “I contributed a nail or two,” he says,[54] “to strengthen the new throne.” What sort of nail he means we do not know. The new throne did not stand very long. The troops of Ferdinand appeared at Fulneck. The village was sacked. Comenius reeled with horror. He saw the weapons for stabbing, for chopping, for cutting, for pricking, for hacking, for tearing and for burning. He saw the savage hacking of limbs, the spurting of blood, the flash of fire.

“Almighty God,” he wrote in one of his books, “what is happening? Must the whole world perish?”

His house was pillaged and gutted; his books and his manuscripts were burned; and he himself, with his wife and children, had now to flee in hot haste from Fulneck and to take refuge for a while on the estate of Baron Charles von Zerotin at Brandeis-on-the-Adler. To the Brethren Brandeis had long been a sacred spot. There Gregory the Patriarch had breathed his last, and there his bones lay buried; there many an historic Brethren’s Synod had been held; and there Comenius took up his abode in a little wood cottage outside the town which tradition said had been built by Gregory himself. He had lost his wife and one of his children on the way from Fulneck; he had lost his post as teacher and minister; and now, for the sake of his suffering Brethren, he wrote his beautiful classical allegory, “The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.”[55] For historical purposes this book is of surpassing value. It is a revelation. It is a picture both of the horrors of the time and of the deep religious life of the Brethren. As Comenius fled from Fulneck to Brandeis he saw sights that harrowed his soul, and now in his cottage at the foot of the hills he described what he had seen. The whole land, said Comenius, was now in a state of disorder. The reign of justice had ended. The reign of pillage had begun. The plot of the book is simple. From scene to scene the pilgrim goes, and everything fills him with disgust. The pilgrim, of course, is Comenius himself; the “Labyrinth” is Bohemia; and the time is the early years of the Thirty Years’ War. He had studied the social conditions of Bohemia; he had seen men of all ranks and all occupations; and now, in witty, satirical language, he held the mirror up to nature. What sort of men were employed by Ferdinand to administer justice in Bohemia? Comenius gave them fine sarcastic names. He called the judges Nogod, Lovestrife, Hearsay, Partial, Loveself, Lovegold, Takegift, Ignorant, Knowlittle, Hasty and Slovenly; he called the witnesses Calumny, Lie and Suspicion; and, in obvious allusion to Ferdinand’s seizure of property, he named the statute-book “The Rapacious Defraudment of the Land.” He saw the lords oppressing the poor, sitting long at table, and discussing lewd and obscene matters. He saw the rich idlers with bloated faces, with bleary eyes, with swollen limbs, with bodies covered with sores. He saw the moral world turned upside down. No longer, said Comenius, did men in Bohemia call things by their right names. They called drunkenness, merriment; greed, economy; usury, interest; lust, love; pride, dignity; cruelty, severity; and laziness, good nature. He saw his Brethren maltreated in the vilest fashion. Some were cast into the fire; some were hanged, beheaded, crucified;[56] some were pierced, chopped, tortured with pincers, and roasted to death on grid-irons. He studied the lives of professing Christians, and found that those who claimed the greatest piety were the sorriest scoundrels in the land. “They drink and vomit,” he said, “quarrel and fight, rob and pillage one another by cunning and by violence, neigh and skip from wantonness, shout and whistle, and commit fornication and adultery worse than any of the others.” He watched the priests, and found them no better than the people. Some snored, wallowing in feather beds; some feasted till they became speechless; some performed dances and leaps; some passed their time in love-making and wantonness.

For these evils Comenius saw one remedy only, and that remedy was the cultivation of the simple and beautiful religion of the Brethren. The last part of his book, “The Paradise of the Heart,” is delightful. Comenius was a marvellous writer. He combined the biting satire of Swift with the devotional tenderness of Thomas à Kempis. As we linger over the closing sections of his book, we can see that he then regarded the Brethren as almost ideal Christians. Among them he found no priests in gaudy attire, no flaunting wealth, no grinding poverty; and passing their time in peace and quietness, they cherished Christ in their hearts. “All,” he says, “were in simple attire, and their ways were gentle and kind. I approached one of their preachers, wishing to speak to him. When, as is our custom, I wished to address him according to his rank, he permitted it not, calling such things worldly fooling.” To them ceremonies were matters of little importance. “Thy religion,” said the Master to the Pilgrim—i.e., to the Brethren’s Church—”shall be to serve me in quiet, and not to bind thyself to any ceremonies, for I do not bind thee by them.”

But Comenius did not stay long at Brandeis-on-the-Adler {1628.}. As Zerotin had sided with the House of Hapsburg, he had been allowed, for a few years, to give shelter to about forty Brethren’s ministers; but now commissioners appeared at his Castle, and ordered him to send these ministers away. The last band of exiles now set out for Poland. The leader was Comenius himself. As they bade farewell to their native land they did so in the firm conviction that they themselves should see the day when the Church of the Brethren should stand once more in her ancient home; and as they stood on a spur of the Giant Mountains, and saw the old loved hills and dales, the towns and hamlets, the nestling churches, Comenius raised his eyes to heaven and uttered that historic prayer which was to have so marvellous an answer. He prayed that in the old home God would preserve a “Hidden Seed,” which would one day grow to a tree; and then the whole band struck up a hymn and set out for Poland. Pathetic was the marching song they sang:—

   Nought have we taken with us,
   All to destruction is hurled,
   We have only our Kralitz Bibles,
   And our Labyrinth of the World.

Comenius led the Brethren to Lissa, in Poland, and Lissa became the metropolis of the exiles.

What happened to many of the exiles no tongue can tell. We know that some Brethren went to Hungary and held together for thirty or forty years; that some were welcomed by the Elector of Saxony and became Lutherans; that some found their way to Holland and became Reformed Protestants; that some settled in Lusatia, Saxony; that a few, such as the Cennicks, crossed the silver streak and found a home in England; and that, finally, a number remained in Bohemia and Moravia, and gathered in the neighbourhood of Landskron, Leitomischl, Kunewalde and Fulneck. What became of these last, the “Hidden Seed,” we shall see before very long. For the present they buried their Bibles in their gardens, held midnight meetings in garrets and stables, preserved their records in dovecotes and in the thatched roofs of their cottages, and, feasting on the glorious promises of the Book of Revelation—a book which many of them knew by heart—awaited the time when their troubles should blow by and the call to arise should sound.

Meanwhile Comenius had never abandoned hope. He was sure that the Brethren’s Church would revive, and equally sure of the means of her revival. For some years there had flourished in the town of Lissa a famous Grammar School. It was founded by Count Raphael IV. Leszczynski; it had recently become a Higher School, or what Germans call a gymnasium, and now it was entirely in the hands of the Brethren. The patron, Count Raphael V. Leszczynski, was a Brother;[57] the director was John Rybinski, a Brethren’s minister; the co-director was another Brethren’s minister, Michael Henrici; and Comenius accepted the post of teacher, and entered on the greatest task of his life. He had two objects before him. He designed to revive the Church of the Brethren and to uplift the whole human race; and for each of these purposes he employed the very same method. The method was education. If the Brethren, said Comenius, were to flourish again, they must pay more attention to the training of the young than ever they had done in days gone by. He issued detailed instructions to his Brethren. They must begin, he said, by teaching the children the pure word of God in their homes. They must bring their children up in habits of piety. They must maintain the ancient discipline of the Brethren. They must live in peace with other Christians, and avoid theological bickerings. They must publish good books in the Bohemian language. They must build new schools wherever possible, and endeavour to obtain the assistance of godly nobles. We have here the key to the whole of Comenius’s career. It is the fashion now with many scholars to divide his life into two distinct parts. On the one hand, they say, he was a Bishop of the Brethren’s Church; on the other hand he was an educational reformer. The distinction is false and artificial. His whole life was of a piece. He never distinguished between his work as a Bishop and his work as an educational reformer. He drew no line between the secular and the sacred. He loved the Brethren’s Church to the end of his days; he regarded her teaching as ideal; he laboured and longed for her revival; and he believed with all the sincerity of his noble and beautiful soul that God would surely enable him to revive that Church by means of education and uplift the world by means of that regenerated Church.

And now for thirteen years, in the Grammar School at Lissa, Comenius devoted the powers of his mind to this tremendous task. What was it, he asked, that had caused the downfall of the Brethren in Bohemia and Moravia? It was their cruel and senseless system of education. He had been to a Brethren’s School himself, and had come to the conclusion that in point of method the schools of the Brethren were no better than the other schools of Europe. “They are,” he declared, “the terror of boys and the slaughter-houses of minds; places where a hatred of literature and books is contracted, where two or more years are spent in learning what might be acquired in one, where what ought to be poured in gently is violently forced and beaten in, and where what ought to be put clearly is presented in a confused and intricate way as if it were a collection of puzzles.” The poor boys, he declared, were almost frightened to death. They needed skins of tin; they were beaten with fists, with canes and with birch-rods till the blood streamed forth; they were covered with scars, stripes, spots and weals; and thus they had learned to hate the schools and all that was taught therein.

He had already tried to introduce a reform. He had learned his new ideas about education, not from the Brethren, but at the University of Herborn. He had studied there the theories of Wolfgang Ratich; he had tried to carry out these theories in the Brethren’s schools at Prerau and Fulneck; and now at Lissa, where he soon became director, he introduced reforms which spread his fame throughout the civilized world. His scheme was grand and comprehensive. He held that if only right methods were employed all things might be taught to all men. “There is,” he said, “nothing in heaven or earth or in the waters, nothing in the abyss under the earth, nothing in the human body, nothing in the soul, nothing in Holy Writ, nothing in the arts, nothing in politics, nothing in the Church, of which the little candidates for wisdom shall be wholly ignorant.” His faith in the power of education was enormous. It was the road, he said, to knowledge, to character, to fellowship with God, to eternal life. He divided the educational course into four stages—the “mother school,” the popular school, the Latin school and the University; and on each of these stages he had something original to say.

For mothers Comenius wrote a book, entitled the “School of Infancy.” In England this book is scarcely known at all: in Bohemia it is a household treasure. Comenius regarded it as a work of first-rate importance. What use, he asked, were schemes of education if a good foundation were not first laid by the mother? For the first six years of his life, said Comenius, the child must be taught by his mother. If she did her work properly she could teach him many marvellous things. He would learn some physics by handling things; some optics by naming colours, light and darkness; some astronomy by studying the twinkling stars; some geography by trudging the neighbouring streets and hills; some chronology by learning the hours, the days and the months; some history by a chat on local events; some geometry by measuring things for himself; some statics by trying to balance his top; some mechanics by building his little toy-house; some dialectics by asking questions; some economics by observing his mother’s skill as a housekeeper; and some music and poetry by singing psalms and hymns. As Comenius penned these ideal instructions, he must surely have known that nine mothers out of ten had neither the patience nor the skill to follow his method; and yet he insisted that, in some things, the mother had a clear course before her. His advice was remarkably sound. At what age, ask mothers, should the education of a child begin? It should begin, said Comenius, before the child is born. At that period in her life the expectant mother must be busy and cheerful, be moderate in her food, avoid all worry, and keep in constant touch with God by prayer; and thus the child will come into the world well equipped for the battle of life. She must, of course, nurse the child herself. She must feed him, when weaned, on plain and simple food. She must provide him with picture books; and, above all, she must teach him to be clean in his habits, to obey his superiors, to be truthful and polite, to bend the knee and fold his hands in prayer, and to remember that the God revealed in Christ was ever near at hand.

Again, Comenius has been justly called the “Father of the Elementary School.” It was here that his ideas had the greatest practical value. His first fundamental principle was that in all elementary schools the scholars must learn in their native language only. He called these schools “Mother tongue schools.” For six or eight years, said Comenius, the scholar must hear no language but his own; and his whole attention must be concentrated, not on learning words like a parrot, but on the direct study of nature. Comenius has been called the great Sense-Realist. He had no belief in learning second-hand. He illustrated his books with pictures. He gave his scholars object lessons. He taught them, not about words, but about things. “The foundation of all learning consists,” he said, “in representing clearly to the senses sensible objects.” He insisted that no boy or girl should ever have to learn by heart anything which he did not understand. He insisted that nature should be studied, not out of books, but by direct contact with nature herself. “Do we not dwell in the garden of nature,” he asked, “as well as the ancients? Why should we not use our eyes, ears and noses as well as they? Why should we not lay open the living book of nature?” He applied these ideas to the teaching of religion and morals. In order to show his scholars the meaning of faith, he wrote a play entitled “Abraham the Patriarch,” and then taught them to act it; and, in order to warn them against shallow views of life, he wrote a comedy, “Diogenes the Cynic, Revived.” He was no vulgar materialist. His whole object was moral and religious. If Comenius had lived in the twentieth century, he would certainly have been disgusted and shocked by the modern demand for a purely secular education. He would have regarded the suggestion as an insult to human nature. All men, he said, were made in the image of God; all men had in them the roots of eternal wisdom; all men were capable of understanding something of the nature of God; and, therefore, the whole object of education was to develop, not only the physical and intellectual, but also the moral and spiritual powers, and thus fit men and women to be, first, useful citizens in the State, and then saints in the Kingdom of Heaven beyond the tomb. From court to court he would lead the students onward, from the first court dealing with nature to the last court dealing with God. “It is,” he said, “our bounden duty to consider the means whereby the whole body of Christian youth may be stirred to vigour of mind and the love of heavenly things.” He believed in caring for the body, because the body was the temple of the Holy Ghost; and, in order to keep the body fit, he laid down the rule that four hours of study a day was as much as any boy or girl could stand. For the same reason he objected to corporal punishment; it was a degrading insult to God’s fair abode. For the same reason he held that at all severe punishment should be reserved for moral offences only. “The whole object of discipline,” he said, “is to form in those committed to our charge a disposition worthy of the children of God.” He believed, in a word, in the teaching of religion in day-schools; he believed in opening school with morning prayers, and he held that all scholars should be taught to say passages of Scripture by heart, to sing psalms, to learn a Catechism and to place their trust in the salvation offered through Jesus Christ. And yet Comenius did not insist on the teaching of any definite religious creed. He belonged himself to a Church that had no creed; he took a broader view of religion than either the Lutherans or the Calvinists; he believed that Christianity could be taught without a formal dogmatic statement; and thus, if I understand him aright, he suggested a solution of a difficult problem which baffles our cleverest politicians to-day.

Again Comenius introduced a new way of learning languages. His great work on this subject was entitled “Janua Linguarum Reserata”—i.e., The Gate of Languages Unlocked. Of all his works this was the most popular. It spread his fame all over Europe. It was translated into fifteen different languages. It became, next to the Bible, the most widely known book on the Continent. For one person who read his delightful “Labyrinth,” there were thousands who nearly knew the “Janua” by heart. The reason was obvious. The “Labyrinth” was a religious book, and was suppressed as dangerous by Catholic authorities; but the “Janua” was only a harmless grammar, and could be admitted with safety anywhere. It is not the works of richest genius that have the largest sale; it is the books that enable men to get on in life; and the “Janua” was popular because, in truth, “it supplied a long-felt want.” It was a Latin grammar of a novel and original kind. For all boys desiring to enter a profession a thorough knowledge of Latin was then an absolute necessity. It was the language in which the learned conversed, the language spoken at all Universities, the language of diplomatists and statesmen, the language of scientific treatises. If a man could make the learning of Latin easier, he was adored as a public benefactor. Comenius’s Grammar was hailed with delight, as a boon and a blessing to men. For years all patient students of Latin had writhed in agonies untold. They had learned long lists of Latin words, with their meanings; they had wrestled in their teens with gerunds, supines, ablative absolutes and distracting rules about the subjunctive mood, and they had tried in vain to take an interest in stately authors far above their understanding. Comenius reversed the whole process. What is the use, he asked, of learning lists of words that have no connection with each other? What is the use of teaching a lad grammar before he has a working knowledge of the language? What is the use of expecting a boy to take an interest in the political arguments of Cicero or the dinner table wisdom of Horace? His method was the conversational. For beginners he prepared an elementary Latin Grammar, containing, besides a few necessary rules, a number of sentences dealing with events and scenes of everyday life. It was divided into seven parts. In the first were nouns and adjectives together; in the second nouns and verbs; in the third adverbs, pronouns, numerals and prepositions; in the fourth remarks about things in the school; in the fifth about things in the house; in the sixth about things in the town; in the seventh some moral maxims. And the scholar went through this book ten times before he passed on to the “Janua” proper. The result can be imagined. At the end of a year the boy’s knowledge of Latin would be of a peculiar kind. Of grammar he would know but little; of words and phrases he would have a goodly store; and thus he was learning to talk the language before he had even heard of its perplexing rules. One example must suffice to illustrate the method. The beginner did not even learn the names of the cases. In a modern English Latin Grammar, the charming sight that meets our gaze is as follows:—

   Nom. Mensa.—A table.
   Voc. Mensa.—Oh, table!
   Acc. Mensam.—A table.
   Gen. Mensæ.—Of a table.
   Dat. Mensæ.—To or for a table.
   Abl. Mensa.—By, with or from a table.

The method of Comenius was different. Instead of mentioning the names of the cases, he showed how the cases were actually used, as follows:—

   Ecce, tabula nigra.—Look there, a black board.
   O tu tabula nigra.—Oh, you black board!
   Video tabulam nigram.—I see a black board.
   Pars tabulæ nigræ.—Part of a black board.
   Addo partem tabulæ nigræ.—I add a part to a black board.
   Vides aliquid in tabula nigra.—I see something on a black board.

With us the method is theory first, practice afterwards; with Comenius the method was practice first, theory afterwards; and the method of Comenius, with modifications, is likely to be the method of the future.

But Comenius’s greatest educational work was undoubtedly his “Great Didactic,” or the “Art of Teaching All Things to All Men.” It was a thorough and comprehensive treatise on the whole science, method, scope and purpose of universal education. As this book has been recently translated into English, I need not here attempt the task of giving an outline of its contents. His ideas were far too grand and noble to put in summary form. For us the point of interest is the fact that while the Thirty Years’ War was raging, and warriors like Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus were turning Europe into a desert, this scholar, banished from his native land, was devising sublime and broad-minded schemes for the elevation of the whole human race. It is this that makes Comenius great. He played no part in the disgraceful quarrels of the age; he breathed no complaint against his persecutors. “Comenius,” said the Jesuit historian Balbin, “wrote many works, but none that were directed against the Catholic Church.” As he looked around upon the learned world he saw the great monster Confusion still unslain, and intended to found a Grand Universal College, which would consist of all the learned in Europe, would devote its attention to the pursuit of knowledge in every conceivable branch, and would arrange that knowledge in beautiful order and make the garden of wisdom a trim parterre. He was so sure that his system was right that he compared it to a great clock or mill, which had only to be set going to bring about the desired result. If his scheme could only be carried out, what a change there would be in this dreary earth! What a speedy end to wars and rumours of wars! What a blessed cessation of religious disputes! What a glorious union of all men of all nations about the feet of God!

At last Comenius became so famous that his friend, Samuel Hartlib, invited him to England; and Comenius found upon his arrival that our English Parliament was interested in his scheme {1641.}. His hopes now rose higher than ever. At last, he thought, he had found a spot where he could actually carry out his grand designs. He had a high opinion of English piety. “The ardour,” he wrote, “with which the people crowd to the Churches is incredible. Almost all bring a copy of the Bible with them. Of the youths and men a large number take down the sermons word by word with their pens. Their thirst for the word of God is so great that many of the nobles, citizens also, and matrons study Greek and Hebrew to be able more safely and more sweetly to drink from the very spring of life.” Of all countries England seemed to him the best suited for the accomplishment of his designs. He discussed the project with John Dury, with Samuel Hartlib, with John Evelyn, with the Bishop of Lincoln, and probably with John Milton. He wanted to establish an “Academy of Pansophy” at Chelsea; and there all the wisest men in the world would meet, draw up a new universal language, like the framers of Esperanto to-day, and devise a scheme to keep all the nations at peace. His castle in the air collapsed. At the very time when Comenius was resident in London this country was on the eve of a revolution. The Irish Rebellion broke out, the Civil War trod on its heels, and Comenius left England for ever.

From this moment his life was a series of bitter and cruel disappointments. As the Thirty Years’ War flickered out to its close, Comenius began to look forward to the day when the Brethren would be allowed to return to Bohemia and Moravia {1648.}. But the Peace of Westphalia broke his heart. What provision was made in that famous Peace for the poor exiled Brethren? Absolutely none. Comenius was angry and disgusted. He had spent his life in the service of humanity; he had spent six years preparing school books for the Swedish Government; and now he complained— perhaps unjustly—that Oxenstierna, the Swedish Chancellor, had never lifted a finger on behalf of the Brethren.

And yet Comenius continued to hope against hope. The more basely the Brethren were deserted by men, the more certain he was that they would be defended by God. He wrote to Oxenstierna on the subject. “If there is no help from man,” he said, “there will be from God, whose aid is wont to commence when that of man ceases.”

For eight years the Brethren, undaunted still, held on together as best they could at Lissa; and Comenius, now their chosen leader, made a brave attempt to revive their schools in Hungary. And then came the final, awful crash. The flames of war burst out afresh. When Charles X. became King of Sweden, John Casimir, King of Poland, set up a claim to the Swedish throne. The two monarchs went to war. Charles X. invaded Poland; John Casimir fled from Lissa; Charles X. occupied the town. What part, it may be asked, did the Brethren play in this war? We do not know. As Charles X. was, of course, a Protestant, it is natural to assume that the Brethren sympathised with his cause and hailed him as a deliverer sent by God; but it is one of the strangest features of their history that we never can tell what part they took in these political conflicts. Comenius was now in Lissa. It is said that he openly sided with Charles X., and urged the Brethren to hold out to the bitter end. I doubt it. For a while the Swedish army triumphed. In that army was an old Bohemian general, who swore to avenge the “Day of Blood”; and the churches and convents were plundered, and monks and priests were murdered. For a moment the Day of Blood was avenged, but for a moment only. As the arm of flesh had failed the Brethren in the days of Budowa, so the arm of flesh failed them now.

The Polish army surrounded the walls of Lissa {1656.}. A panic broke out among the citizens. The Swedish garrison gave way. The Polish soldiers pressed in. Again Comenius’s library was burned, and the grammar school where he had taught was reduced to ashes. The whole town was soon in flames. The fire spread for miles in the surrounding country. As the Brethren fled from their last fond home, with the women and children huddled in waggons, they saw barns and windmills flaring around them, and heard the tramp of the Polish army in hot pursuit. As Pastor John Jacobides and two Acoluths were on their way to Karmin, they were seized, cut down with spades and thrown into a pit to perish. For Samuel Kardus, the last martyr of the fluttering fragment, a more ingenious torture was reserved. He was placed with his head between a door and the door-post, and as the door was gently but firmly closed, his head was slowly crushed to pieces.

And so the hopes of Comenius were blasted. As the aged Bishop drew near to his end, he witnessed the failure of all his schemes. Where now was his beloved Church of the Brethren? It was scattered like autumn leaves before the blast. And yet Comenius hoped on to the bitter end. The news of his sufferings reached the ears of Oliver Cromwell. He offered to find a home for the Brethren in Ireland. If Comenius had only accepted that offer it is certain that Oliver would have been as good as his word. He longed to make Ireland a Protestant country; and the whole modern history of Ireland might have been altered. But Comenius had now become an unpractical dreamer. For all his learning he was very simple-minded; and for all his piety he had a weak side to his character. He had listened in his youth to the prophecies of Christopher Kotter; he had listened also to the ravings of Christina Poniatowski; and now he fell completely under the influence of the vile impostor, Drabik, who pretended to have a revelation from heaven, and predicted that before very long the House of Austria would be destroyed and the Brethren be enabled to return to their native home. Instead, therefore, of accepting Cromwell’s offer, Comenius spent his last few years in collecting money for the Brethren; and pleasant it is to record the fact that much of that money came from England. Some was sent by Prince Rupert, and some by officials of the Church of England; and Comenius was able to spend the money in printing helpful, devotional works for the Brethren. His loyalty now to the Brethren was beautiful. It is easy to be faithful to a prosperous Church; Comenius was faithful when the whirl was at the worst. Faster than ever the ship was sinking, but still the brave old white-haired Captain held to his post on the bridge. Few things are more pathetic in history than the way in which Comenius commended the Brethren to the care of the Church of England. “To you, dear friends,” he wrote in hope, “we commit our dear mother, the Church herself. Even in her death, which seems approaching, you ought to love her, because in her life she has gone before you for more than two centuries with examples of faith and patience.” Of all the links between the old Church of the Brethren and the new, Comenius was the strongest. He handed on the Brethren’s Episcopal Orders. He consecrated his son-in-law, Peter Jablonsky; this Peter consecrated his own son, Daniel Ernest; and this Daniel Ernest Jablonsky consecrated David Nitschmann, the first Bishop of the Renewed Church of the Brethren.

He handed on, secondly, the Brethren’s system of discipline. He published an edition of the “Ratio Disciplinæ,” and this it was that fired Zinzendorf’s soul with love for the Brethren’s Church.

But, thirdly, and most important of all, Comenius kept the old faith burning in the hearts of the “Hidden Seed.” For the benefit of those still worshipping in secret in Bohemia and Moravia, he prepared a Catechism, entitled “The Old Catholic Christian Religion in Short Questions and Answers”; and by this Catholic Religion he meant the broad and simple faith of the Bohemian Brethren. “Perish sects,” said Comenius; “perish the founders of sects. I have consecrated myself to Christ alone.” But the purpose of the Catechism had to be kept a secret. “It is meant,” said Comenius, in the preface, “for all the pious and scattered sheep of Christ, especially those at F., G., G., K., K., S., S. and Z.” These letters can be easily explained. They stood for the villages of Fulneck, Gersdorf, Gestersdorf, Kunewalde, Klandorf, Stechwalde, Seitendorf and Zauchtenthal; and these are the places from which the first exiles came to renew the Brethren’s Church at Herrnhut.

Fifty years before his prayers were answered, Comenius lay silent in the grave (1672). Yet never did bread cast upon the waters more richly return.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE. THE BOHEMIAN BRETHREN AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

As the relations of the Brethren with England were only of a very occasional nature, it is not easy to weave them into the narrative. But the following particulars will be of special interest; they show the opinion held of the Brethren by officials of the Church of England:—

1. The case of John Bernard.—At some period in the reign of Queen Elizabeth a number of scholarships were founded at Oxford for the benefit of Bohemian students; and in 1583 John Bernard, a Moravian student, took his B.D. degree at Oxford. The record in the University Register is as follows: “Bernardus, John, a Moravian, was allowed to supply B.D. He had studied theology for ten years at German Universities, and was now going to the Universities of Scotland.” This proves that the University of Oxford recognised Bernard as a man in holy orders; for none but men in holy orders could take the B.D. degree.

2. The case of Paul Hartmann.—In 1652 (October 15th) Paul Hartmann was ordained a Deacon at a Synod of the Moravian Church at Lissa. In 1657 he came to England, along with his brother, Adam Samuel Hartmann, to raise funds for the exiles. In 1660 he was ordained a Presbyter by Bishop Robert Skinner, of Oxford, in Christ Church; in 1671 he was admitted Chaplain or Petty Canon of Oxford Cathedral; and in 1676 he became Rector of Shillingford, Berkshire. This proves that Bishop Skinner, of Oxford, recognised Paul Hartmann’s status as a Deacon; and that recognition, so far as we know, was never questioned by any Anglican authorities. But that is not the end of the story. At this period a considerable number of Brethren had found a home in England; the Continental Brethren wished to provide for their spiritual needs, and, therefore, in 1675 they wrote a letter to the Anglican Bishops requesting them to consecrate Hartmann a Bishop. Of that letter a copy has been preserved in the Johannis-Kirche at Lissa. “It is no superstition,” they wrote, “that fills us with this desire. It is simply our love of order and piety; and the Church of England is the only Protestant Church beside our own that possesses this treasure, and can, therefore, come to our help.” For some reason, however, this pathetic request was not carried out. What answer did the Anglican Bishops give? We do not know; no answer has been discovered; and Hartmann remained a Presbyter to the end.

3. The case of Adam Samuel Hartmann.—He was first a minister of the Moravian Church at Lissa (1652-56). In 1657 he came to England to collect money; in 1673 he was consecrated a Moravian Bishop at Lissa; and in 1680 he received the degree of D.D. at Oxford. His diploma refers to him as a Bishop. This suggests, if it does not actually prove, that the University of Oxford recognised him as a valid Bishop.

4. The case of Bishop Amos Comenius.—Of all the Bishops of the Bohemian Brethren Comenius did most to stir up sympathy on their behalf in England. In 1657 he sent the two Hartmanns and Paul Cyrill to the Archbishop of Canterbury with a MS. entitled, “Ultimus in Protestantes Bohemiæ confessionis ecclesias Antichristi furor”; in 1660 he dedicated his “Ratio Disciplinæ” to the Church of England; and in 1661 he published his “Exhortation of the Churches of Bohemia to the Church of England.” In this book Comenius took a remarkable stand. He declared that the Slavonian Churches had been planted by the Apostles; that these Churches had “run up to a head and ripened” in the Unity of the Brethren; and that he himself was now the only surviving Bishop of the remnants of these Churches. In other words, he represented himself as the Bishop of a Church of Apostolic origin. In what way, it may be asked, was this claim received by Anglican authorities? The next case will supply the answer.

5. The case of Archbishop Sancroft.—In 1683 King Charles II. issued a Cabinet Order on behalf of the Brethren; the order was accompanied by an account of their distresses; the account was “recommended under the hands” of William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry Compton, Bishop of London; and in that account the statement was deliberately made that the Brethren deserved the assistance of Anglicans, not only because they had “renounced the growing errors of Popery,” but also because they had “preserved the Succession of Episcopal Orders.” The last words can only bear one meaning; and that meaning obviously is that both the Primate and the Bishop of London regarded Moravian Episcopal Orders as valid. The next case tells a similar story.

6. The case of Archbishop Wake.—We have now to step over a period of thirty-three years. As soon as James II. came to the throne, the interest of English Churchmen in the Brethren appears to have waned, and neither William III. nor Queen Anne took any steps on their behalf. And yet the connection of the Brethren with England was not entirely broken. The bond of union was Daniel Ernest Jablonsky. He was Amos Comenius’s grandson. In 1680 he came to England; he studied three years at Oxford, and finally received the degree of D.D. In 1693 he was appointed Court Preacher at Berlin; in 1699 he was consecrated a Moravian Bishop; and in 1709 he was elected corresponding secretary of the S.P.C.K. Meanwhile, however, fresh disasters had overtaken the Brethren. As the sun was rising on July 29th, 1707, a troop of Russians rode into the town of Lissa, and threw around them balls of burning pitch. The town went up in flames; the last home of the Brethren was destroyed, and the Brethren were in greater distress than ever. At this point Jablonsky nobly came to their aid. He began by publishing an account of their distresses; he tried to raise a fund on their behalf; and finally (1715) he sent his friend, Bishop Sitkovius, to England, to lay their case before Archbishop Wake. Again, as in the case of Archbishop Sancroft, this appeal to the Church of England was successful. The Archbishop brought the case before George I., the King consulted the Privy Council, the Privy Council gave consent; the King issued Letters Patent to all the Archbishops and Bishops of England and Wales, and Wake and John Robinson, Bishop of London, issued a special appeal, which was read in all the London churches. The result was twofold. On the one hand money was collected for the Brethren; on the other, some person or persons unknown denounced them as Hussites, declared that their Bishops could not be distinguished from Presbyters, and contended that, being followers of Wycliffe, they must surely, like Wycliffe, be enemies of all episcopal government. Again Jablonsky came to the Brethren’s rescue. He believed, himself, in the Brethren’s Episcopal Orders; he prepared a treatise on the subject, entitled, “De Ordine et Successione Episcopali in Unitate Fratrum Bohemorum conservato”; he sent a copy of that treatise to Wake, and Wake, in reply, declared himself perfectly satisfied.

To what conclusion do the foregoing details point? It is needful here to speak with caution and precision. As the claims of the Brethren were never brought before Convocation, we cannot say that the Anglican Church as a body officially recognised the Brethren as a sister Episcopal Church. But, on the other hand, we can also say that the Brethren’s orders were never doubted by any Anglican authorities. They were recognised by two Archbishops of Canterbury; they were recognised by Bishop Skinner, of Oxford; they were recognised by the University of Oxford. They were recognised, in a word, by every Anglican authority before whose notice they happened to be brought.

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The City of Prague was divided into two parts, the Old Town and the New Town. In the middle of the Old Town was a large open space, called the Great Square. On the west side of the Great Square stood the Council House, on the east the old Thein Church. The condemned prisoners, half of whom were Brethren, were in the Council House: in front of their window was the scaffold, draped in black cloth, twenty feet high, and twenty-two yards square; from the window they stepped out on to a balcony, and from the balcony to the scaffold ran a short flight of steps. In that Great Square, and on that scaffold, we find the scene of our story.

When early in the morning of Monday, June 21st, the assembled prisoners looked out of the windows of their rooms to take their last view of earth, they saw a splendid, a brilliant, a gorgeous, but to them a terrible scene {1621.}. They saw God’s sun just rising in the east and reddening the sky and shining in each other’s faces; they saw the dark black scaffold bathed in light, and the squares of infantry and cavalry ranged around it; they saw the eager, excited throng, surging and swaying in the Square below and crowding on the house-tops to right and left; and they saw on the further side of the square the lovely twin towers of the old Thein Church, where Gregory had knelt and Rockycana had preached in the brave days of old. As the church clocks chimed the hour of five a gun was fired from the castle; the prisoners were informed that their hour had come, and were ordered to prepare for their doom; and Lichtenstein and the magistrates stepped out on to the balcony, an awning above them to screen them from the rising sun. The last act of the tragedy opened.

As there was now a long morning’s work to be done, that work was begun at once; and as the heads of the martyrs fell off the block in quick succession the trumpets brayed and the drums beat an accompaniment. Grim and ghastly was the scene in that Great Square in Prague, on that bright June morning well nigh three hundred years ago. There fell the flower of the Bohemian nobility; and there was heard the swan song of the Bohemian Brethren. As the sun rose higher in the eastern sky and shone on the windows of the Council House, the sun of the Brethren’s pride and power was setting in a sea of blood; and clear athwart the lingering light stood out, for all mankind to see, the figures of the last defenders of their freedom and their faith. Among the number not one had shown the white feather in prospect of death. Not a cheek was blanched, not a voice faltered as the dread hour drew near. One and all they had fortified themselves to look the waiting angel of death in the face. As they sat in their rooms the evening before—a sabbath evening it was—they had all, in one way or another, drawn nigh to God in prayer. In one room the prisoners had taken the Communion together, in another they joined in singing psalms and hymns; in another they had feasted in a last feast of love. Among these were various shades of faith—Lutherans, Calvinists, Utraquists, Brethren; but now all differences were laid aside, for all was nearly over now. One laid the cloth, and another the plates; a third brought water and a fourth said the simple grace. As the night wore on they lay down on tables and benches to snatch a few hours of that troubled sleep which gives no rest. At two they were all broad awake again, and again the sound of psalms and hymns was heard; and as the first gleams of light appeared each dressed himself as though for a wedding, and carefully turned down the ruffle of his collar so as to give the executioner no extra trouble.

Swiftly, in order, and without much cruelty the gory work was done. The morning’s programme had all been carefully arranged. At each corner of the square was a squad of soldiers to hold the people in awe, and to prevent an attempt at rescue. One man, named Mydlar, was the executioner; and, being a Protestant, he performed his duties with as much decency and humanity as possible. He used four different swords, and was paid about £100 for his morning’s work. With his first sword he beheaded eleven; with his second, five; with his two last, eight. The first of these swords is still to be seen at Prague, and has the names of its eleven victims engraven upon it. Among these names is the name of Wenzel von Budowa. In every instance Mydlar seems to have done his duty at one blow. At his side stood an assistant, and six masked men in black. As soon as Mydlar had severed the neck, the assistant placed the dead man’s right hand on the block; the sword fell again; the hand dropped at the wrist; and the men in black, as silent as night, gathered up the bleeding members, wrapped them in clean black cloth, and swiftly bore them away.

The name of Budowa was second on the list. As many of the records of the time were destroyed by fire, we are not able to tell in full what part Budowa had played in the great revolt. He had, however, been a leader on the conquered side. He had fought, as we know, for the Letter of Majesty; he had bearded Rudolph II. in his den; he had openly opposed the election of Ferdinand II.; he had welcomed Frederick, the Protestant Winter King, at the city gates; and, therefore, he was justly regarded by Ferdinand as a champion of the Protestant national faith and an enemy of the Catholic Church and throne. As he was now over seventy years of age it is hardly likely that he had fought on the field of battle. After the battle of the White Mountain he had retired with his family to his country estate. He had then, strange to say, been one of those entrapped into Prague by Lichtenstein, and had been imprisoned in the White Tower. There he was tried and condemned as a rebel, and there, as even Gindely admits, he bore himself like a hero to the last. At first, along with some other nobles, he signed a petition to the Elector of Saxony, imploring him to intercede with the Emperor on their behalf. The petition received no answer. He resigned himself to his fate. He was asked why he had walked into the lion’s den. For some reason that I fail to understand Gindely says that what we are told about the conduct of the prisoners has only a literary interest. To my mind the last words of Wenzel of Budowa are of the highest historical importance. They show how the fate of the Brethren’s Church was involved in the fate of Bohemia. He had come to Prague as a patriot and as a Brother. He was dying both for his country and for his Church.

“My heart impelled me to come,” he said; “to forsake my country and its cause would have been sinning against my conscience. Here am I, my God, do unto Thy servant as seemeth good unto Thee. I would rather die myself than see my country die.”

As he sat in his room on the Saturday evening—two days before the execution—he was visited by two Capuchin monks. He was amazed at their boldness. As they did not understand Bohemian, the conversation was conducted in Latin. They informed him that their visit was one of pity.

“Of pity?” asked the white-haired old Baron, “How so?”

“We wish to show your lordship the way to heaven.” He assured them that he knew the way and stood on firm ground.

“My Lord only imagines,” they rejoined, “that he knows the way of salvation. He is mistaken. Not being a member of the Holy Church, he has no share in the Church’s salvation.”

But Budowa placed his trust in Christ alone.

“I have this excellent promise,” he said, “Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Therefore, until my last moment, will I abide by our true Church.”

Thus did Budowa declare the faith of the Brethren. The Capuchin monks were horrified. They smote their breasts, declared that so hardened a heretic they had never seen, crossed themselves repeatedly, and left him sadly to his fate.

For the last time, on the Monday morning, he was given another chance to deny his faith. Two Jesuits came to see him.

“We have come to save my lord’s soul,” they said, “and to perform a work of mercy.”

“Dear fathers,” replied Budowa, “I thank my God that His Holy Spirit has given me the assurance that I will be saved through the blood of the Lamb.” He appealed to the words of St. Paul: “I know whom I have believed: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.”

“But,” said the Jesuits, “Paul there speaks of himself, not of others.”

“You lie,” said Budowa, “for does he not expressly add: ‘and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.'”

And after a little more argumentation, the Jesuits left in disgust.

The last moment in Budowa’s life now arrived. The messenger came and told him it was his turn to die. He bade his friends farewell.

“I go,” he declared, “in the garment of righteousness; thus arrayed shall I appear before God.”

Alone, with firm step he strode to the scaffold, stroking proudly his silver hair and beard.

“Thou old grey head of mine,” said he, “thou art highly honoured; thou shalt be adorned with the Martyr-Crown.”

As he knelt and prayed he was watched by the pitying eyes of the two kind-hearted Jesuits who had come to see him that morning. He prayed for his country, for his Church, for his enemies, and committed his soul to Christ; the sword flashed brightly in the sun; and one strong blow closed the restless life of Wenzel von Budowa, the “Last of the Bohemians.”

And with his death there came the death of the Ancient Church of the Brethren. From the moment when Budowa’s hoary head fell from the block the destruction of the Church was only a question of time. As Budowa died, so died the others after him. We have no space to tell here in detail how his bright example was followed; how nearly all departed with the words upon their lips, “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit”; how the drums beat louder each time before the sword fell, that the people might not hear the last words of triumphant confidence in God; how Caspar Kaplir, an old man of eighty-six, staggered up to the scaffold arrayed in a white robe, which he called his wedding garment, but was so weak that he could not hold his head to the block; how Otto von Los looked up and said, “Behold I see the heavens opened”; how Dr. Jessen, the theologian, had his tongue seized with a pair of tongs, cut off at the roots with a knife, and died with the blood gushing from his mouth; how three others were hanged on a gallows in the Square; how the fearful work went steadily on till the last head had fallen, and the black scaffold sweated blood; and how the bodies of the chiefs were flung into unconsecrated ground, and their heads spitted on poles in the city, there to grin for full ten years as a warning to all who held the Protestant faith. In all the story of the Brethren’s Church there has been no other day like that. It was the day when the furies seemed to ride triumphant in the air, when the God of their fathers seemed to mock at the trial of the innocent, and when the little Church that had battled so bravely and so long was at last stamped down by the heel of the conqueror, till the life-blood flowed no longer in her veins.

Not, indeed, till the last breath of Church life had gone did the fearful stamping cease. The zeal of Ferdinand knew no bounds. He was determined, not only to crush the Brethren, but to wipe their memory from off the face of the earth. He regarded the Brethren as a noisome pest. Not a stone did he and his servants leave unturned to destroy them. They began with the churches. Instead of razing them to the ground, which would, of course, have been wanton waste, they turned them into Roman Catholic Chapels by the customary methods of purification and rededication. They rubbed out the inscriptions on the walls, and put new ones in their places, lashed the pulpits with whips, beat the altars with sticks, sprinkled holy water to cleanse the buildings of heresy, opened the graves and dishonoured the bones of the dead. Where once was the cup for Communion was now the image of the Virgin. Where once the Brethren had sung their hymns and read their Bibles were now the Confessional and the Mass.

Meanwhile the Brethren had been expelled from Bohemia. It is a striking proof of the influence of the Brethren that Ferdinand turned his attention to them before he troubled about the other Protestants. They had been the first in moral power; they had done the most to spread the knowledge of the Bible; they had produced the greatest literary men of the country; and, therefore, now they must be the first to go. What actually happened to many of the Brethren during the next few years no tongue can tell. But we know enough. We know that Ferdinand cut the Letter of Majesty in two with his scissors. We know that thirty-six thousand families left Bohemia and Moravia, and that the population of Bohemia dwindled from three millions to one. We know that about one-half of the property—lands, houses, castles, churches—passed over into the hands of the King. We know that the University of Prague was handed over to the Jesuits. We know that the scandalous order was issued that all Protestant married ministers who consented to join the Church of Rome might keep their wives by passing them off as cooks. We know that villages were sacked; that Kralitz Bibles, Hymn-books, Confessions, Catechisms, and historical works of priceless value—among others Blahoslaw’s “History of the Brethren”—were burned in thousand; and that thus nearly every trace of the Brethren was swept out of the land. We know that some of the Brethren were hacked in pieces, that some were tortured, that some were burned alive, that some swung on gibbets at the city gates and at the country cross-roads among the carrion crows. For six years Bohemia was a field of blood, and Spanish soldiers, drunk and raging, slashed and pillaged on every hand. “Oh, to what torments,” says a clergyman of that day, “were the promoters of the Gospel exposed! How they were tortured and massacred! How many virgins were violated to death! How many respectable women abused! How many children torn from their mothers’ breasts and cut in pieces in their presence! How many dragged from their beds and thrown naked from the windows! Good God! What cries of woe we were forced to hear from those who lay upon the rack, and what groans and terrible outcries from those who besought the robbers to spare them for God’s sake.” It was thus that the Brethren, at the point of the sword, were driven from hearth and home: thus that they fled before the blast and took refuge in foreign lands; thus, amid bloodshed, and crime, and cruelty, and nameless torture, that the Ancient Church of the Bohemian Brethren bade a sad farewell to the land of its birth, and disappeared from the eyes of mankind.

Let us review the story of that wonderful Church. What a marvellous change had come upon it! It began in the quiet little valley of Kunwald: it ended in the noisy streets of Prague. It began in peace and brotherly love: it ended amid the tramp of horses, the clank of armour, the swish of swords, the growl of artillery, the whistle of bullets, the blare of trumpets, the roll of drums, and the moans of the wounded and the dying. It began in the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount: it ended amid the ghastly horrors of war. What was it that caused the destruction of that Church? At this point some historians, being short of facts, have thought fit to indulge in philosophical reflections; and, following the stale philosophy of Bildad—that all suffering is the punishment of sin—have informed us that the Brethren were now the victims of internal moral decay. They had lost, we are told, their sense of unity; they had relaxed their discipline; they had become morally weak; and the day of their external prosperity was the day of their internal decline. For this pious and utterly unfounded opinion the evidence usually summoned is the fact that Bishop Amos Comenius, in a sermon entitled “Haggai Redivivus,” had some rather severe remarks to make about the sins of his Brethren. But Bishops’ sermons are dangerous historical evidence. It is not the business of a preacher to tell the whole truth in one discourse. He is not a witness in the box; he is a prophet aiming at some special moral reform. If a Bishop is lecturing his Brethren for their failings he is sure to indulge, not exactly in exaggeration, but in one-sided statements of the facts. He will talk at length about the sins, and say nothing about the virtues. It is, of course, within the bounds of possibility that when the Brethren became more prosperous they were not so strict in some of their rules as they had been in earlier days; and it is also true that when Wenzel von Budowa summoned his followers to arms, the deed was enough, as one writer remarks, to make Gregory the Patriarch groan in his grave. But of any serious moral decline there is no solid proof. It is absurd to blame the Brethren for mixing in politics, and absurd to say that this mixing was the cause of their ruin. At that time in Bohemia religion and politics were inseparable. If a man took a definite stand in religion he took thereby a definite stand in politics. To be a Protestant was to be a rebel. If Budowa had never lifted a finger, the destruction of the Brethren would have been no less complete. The case of Baron Charles von Zerotin proves the point. He took no part in the rebellion; he sided, in the war, with the House of Hapsburg; he endeavoured, that is, to remain a Protestant and yet at the same time a staunch supporter of Ferdinand; and yet, loyal subject though he was, he was not allowed, except for a few years, to shelter Protestant ministers in his castle, and had finally to sell his estates and to leave the country. At heart, Comenius had a high opinion of his Brethren. For nearly fifty weary years—as we shall see in the next chapter—this genius and scholar longed and strove for the revival of the Brethren’s Church, and in many of his books he described the Brethren, not as men who had disgraced their profession, but as heroes holding the faith in purity. He described his Brethren as broad-minded men, who took no part in religious quarrels, but looked towards heaven, and bore themselves affably to all; he said to the exiles in one of his letters, “You have endured to the end”; he described them again, in a touching appeal addressed to the Church of England, as a model of Christian simplicity; and he attributed their downfall in Bohemia, not to any moral weakness, but to their neglect of education. If the Brethren, he argued, had paid more attention to learning, they would have gained the support of powerful friends, who would not have allowed them to perish. I admit, of course, that Comenius was naturally partial, and that when he speaks in praise of the Brethren we must receive his evidence with caution; but, on the other hand, I hold that the theory of a serious moral decline, so popular with certain German historians, is not supported by evidence. If the Brethren had shown much sign of corruption we should expect to find full proof of the fact in the Catholic writers of the day. But such proof is not to hand. Not even the Jesuit historian, Balbin, had anything serious to say against the Brethren. The only Catholic writer, as far as I know, who attacked their character was the famous Papal Nuncio, Carlo Caraffa. He says that the Brethren in Moravia had become a little ambitious and avaricious, “with some degree of luxury in their habits of life”;[53] but he has no remarks of a similar nature to make about the Brethren in Bohemia. The real cause of the fall of the Brethren was utterly different. They fell, not because they were morally weak, but because they were killed by the sword or forcibly robbed of their property. They fell because Bohemia fell; and Bohemia fell for a variety of reasons; partly because her peasants were serfs and had no fight left in them; partly because her nobles blundered in their choice of a Protestant King; and partly because, when all is said, she was only a little country in the grip of a mightier power. In some countries the Catholic reaction was due to genuine religious fervour; in Bohemia it was brought about by brute force; and even with all his money and his men King Ferdinand found the destruction of the Brethren no easy task. He had the whole house of Hapsburg on his side; he had thousands of mercenary soldiers from Spain; he was restrained by no scruples of conscience; and yet it took him six full years to drive the Brethren from the country. And even then he had not completed his work. In spite of his efforts, many thousands of the people still remained Brethren at heart; and as late as 1781, when Joseph II. issued his Edict of Toleration, 100,000 in Bohemia and Moravia declared themselves Brethren. We have here a genuine proof of the Brethren’s vigour. It had been handed on from father to son through five generations. For the Brethren there was still no legal recognition in Bohemia and Moravia; the Edict applied to Lutherans and Calvinists only; and if the Brethren had been weak men they might now have called themselves Lutherans or Calvinists. But this, of course, carries us beyond the limits of this chapter. For the present King Ferdinand had triumphed; and word was sent to the Pope at Rome that the Church of the Brethren was no more.

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The dream of bliss became a nightmare. As the tide of Protestantism ebbed and flowed in various parts of the Holy Roman Empire, so the fortunes of the Brethren ebbed and flowed in the old home of their fathers. We have seen how the Brethren rose to prosperity and power. We have now to see what brought about their ruin. It was nothing in the moral character of the Brethren themselves. It was purely and simply their geographical position. If Bohemia had only been an island, as Shakespeare seems to have thought it was, it is more than likely that the Church of the Brethren would have flourished there down to the present day. But Bohemia lay in the very heart of European politics; the King was always a member of the House of Austria; the House of Austria was the champion of the Catholic faith, and the Brethren now were crushed to powder in the midst of that mighty European conflict known as the Thirty Years’ War. We note briefly the main stages of the process.

The first cause was the rising power of the Jesuits. For the last fifty years these zealous men had been quietly extending their influence in the country. They had built a magnificent college in Prague. They had established a number of schools for the common people. They had obtained positions as tutors in noble families. They went about from village to village, preaching, sometimes in the village churches and sometimes in the open air; and one of their number, Wenzel Sturm, had written an exhaustive treatise denouncing the doctrines of the Brethren. But now these Jesuits used more violent measures. They attacked the Brethren in hot, abusive language. They declared that the wives of Protestant ministers were whores. They denounced their children as bastards. They declared that it was better to have the devil in the house than a Protestant woman. And the more they preached, and the more they wrote, the keener the party feeling in Bohemia grew.

The next cause was the Letter of Majesty itself. As soon as that Letter was closely examined, a flaw was found in the crystal. We come to what has been called the “Church Building Difficulty.” It was clearly provided in one clause of the Letter of Majesty that the Protestants should have perfect liberty to build churches on all Royal estates. But now arose the difficult question, what were Royal estates? What about Roman Catholic Church estates? What about estates held by Catholic officials as tenants of the King? Were these Royal estates or were they not? There were two opinions on the subject. According to the Protestants they were; according to the Jesuits they were not; and now the Jesuits used this argument to influence the action of Matthias, the next King of Bohemia. The dispute soon came to blows. At Klostergrab the land belonged to the Catholic Archbishop of Prague; at Brunau it belonged to the Abbot of Brunau; and yet, on each of these estates, the Protestants had churches. They believed, of course, that they were in the right. They regarded those estates as Royal estates. They had no desire to break the law of the land. But now the Catholics began to force the pace. At Brunau the Abbot interfered and turned the Protestants out of the church. At Klostergrab the church was pulled down, and the wood of which it was built was used as firewood; and in each case the new King, Matthias, took the Catholic side. The truth is, Matthias openly broke the Letter. He broke it on unquestioned Royal estates. He expelled Protestant ministers from their pulpits, and put Catholics in their place. His officers burst into Protestant churches and interrupted the services; and, in open defiance of the law of the land, the priests drove Protestants with dogs and scourges to the Mass, and thrust the wafer down their mouths. What right, said the Protestants, had the Catholics to do these things? The Jesuits had an amazing answer ready. For two reasons, they held, the Letter of Majesty was invalid. It was invalid because it had been obtained by force, and invalid because it had not been sanctioned by the Pope. What peace could there be with these conflicting views? It is clear that a storm was brewing.

The third cause was the famous dispute about the Kingship. As Matthias was growing old and feeble, it was time to choose his successor; and Matthias, therefore, summoned a Diet, and informed the Estates, to their great surprise, that all they had to do now was to accept as King his adopted son, Ferdinand Archduke of Styria. At first the Diet was thunderstruck. They had met to choose their own King. They intended to choose a Protestant, and now they were commanded to choose this Ferdinand, the most zealous Catholic in Europe. And yet, for some mysterious reason, the Diet actually yielded. They surrendered their elective rights; they accepted Ferdinand as King, and thus, at the most critical and dangerous point in the whole history of the country, they allowed a Catholic devotee to become the ruler of a Protestant people. For that fatal mistake they had soon to pay in full. Some say they were frightened by threats; some say that the Diet was summoned in a hurry, and that only a few attended. The truth is, they were completely outwitted. At this point the Protestant nobles of Bohemia showed that fatal lack of prompt and united action which was soon to fill the whole land with all the horrors of war. In vain Budowa raised a vehement protest. He found but few to support him. If the Protestants desired peace and good order in Bohemia, they ought to have insisted upon their rights and elected a Protestant King; and now, in Ferdinand, they had accepted a man who was pledged to fight for the Church of Rome with every breath of his body. He was a man of fervent piety. He was a pupil of the Jesuits. He regarded himself as the divinely appointed champion of the Catholic faith. He had already stamped out the Protestants in Styria. He had a strong will and a clear conception of what he regarded as his duty. He would rather, he declared, beg his bread from door to door, with his family clinging affectionately around him, than allow a single Protestant in his dominions. “I would rather,” he said, “rule over a wilderness than over heretics.” But what about his oath to observe the Letter of Majesty? Should he take the oath or not? If he took it he would be untrue to his conscience; if he refused he could never be crowned King of Bohemia. He consulted his friends the Jesuits. They soon eased his conscience. It was wicked, they said, of Rudolph II. to sign such a monstrous document; but it was not wicked for the new King to take the oath to keep it. And, therefore, Ferdinand took the oath, and was crowned King of Bohemia. “We shall now see,” said a lady at the ceremony, “whether the Protestants are to rule the Catholics or the Catholics the Protestants.”

She was right. Forthwith the Protestants realised their blunder, and made desperate efforts to recover the ground they had lost. Now was the time for the Twenty-four Defenders to arise and do their duty; now was the time, now or never, to make the Letter no longer a grinning mockery. They began by acting strictly according to law. They had been empowered to summon representatives of the Protestant Estates. They summoned their assembly, prepared a petition, and sent it off to Matthias. He replied that their assembly was illegal. He refused to remedy their grievances. The Defenders were goaded to fury. At their head was a violent man, Henry Thurn. He resolved on open rebellion. He would have the new King Ferdinand dethroned and have his two councillors, Martinic and Slawata, put to death. It was the 23rd of May, 1618. At an early hour on that fatal day, the Protestant Convention met in the Hradschin, and then, a little later, the fiery Thurn sallied out with a body of armed supporters, arrived at the Royal Castle, and forced his way into the Regent’s Chamber, where the King’s Councillors were assembled. There, in a corner, by the stove sat Martinic and Slawata. There, in that Regent’s Chamber, began the cause of all the woe that followed. There was struck the first blow of the Thirty Years’ War. As Thurn and his henchmen stood in the presence of the two men, who, in their opinion, had done the most to poison the mind of Matthias, they felt that the decisive moment had come. The interview was stormy. Voices rang in wild confusion. The Protestant spokesman was Paul von Rican. He accused Martinic and Slawata of two great crimes. They had openly broken the Letter of Majesty, and had dictated King Matthias’s last reply. He appealed to his supporters crowded into the corridor outside.

“Aye, aye,” shouted the crowd.

“Into the Black Tower with them,” said some.

“Nay, nay,” said Rupow, a member of the Brethren’s Church, “out of the window with them, in the good old Bohemian fashion.”

At this signal, agreed upon before, Martinic was dragged to the window. He begged for a father confessor.

“Commend thy soul to God,” said someone. “Are we to allow any Jesuit scoundrels here?”

“Jesus! Mary!” he screamed.

He was flung headlong from the window. He clutched at the window-sill. A blow came down on his hands. He had to leave go, and down he fell, seventy feet, into the moat below.

“Let us see,” said someone, “whether his Mary will help him.”

He fell on a heap of soft rubbish. He scrambled away with only a wound in the head.

“By God,” said one of the speakers, “his Mary has helped him.”

At this point the conspirators appear to have lost their heads. As Martinic had not been killed by his fall, it was absurd to treat Slawata in the same way; and yet they now flung him out of the window, and his secretary Fabricius after him. Not one of the three was killed, not one was even maimed for life, and through the country the rumour spread that all three had been delivered by the Virgin Mary.

>From that moment war was inevitable. As the details of the struggle do not concern us, it will be enough to state here that the Defenders now, in slipshod fashion, began to take a variety of measures to maintain the Protestant cause. They formed a national Board of Thirty Directors. They assessed new taxes to maintain the war, but never took the trouble to collect them. They relied more on outside help than on their own united action. They deposed Ferdinand II.; they elected Frederick, Elector Palatine, and son-in-law of James I. of England, as King of Bohemia; and they ordered the Jesuits out of the kingdom. There was a strange scene in Prague when these Jesuits departed. They formed in procession in the streets, and, clad in black, marched off with bowed heads and loud wailings; and when their houses were examined they were found full of gunpowder and arms. For the moment the Protestants of Prague were wild with joy. In the great Cathedral they pulled off the ornaments and destroyed costly pictures. What part did the Brethren play in these abominations? We do not know. At this tragic point in their fateful story our evidence is so lamentably scanty that it is absolutely impossible to say what part they played in the revolution. But one thing at least we know without a doubt. We know that the Catholics were now united and the Protestants quarrelling with each other; we know that Ferdinand was prompt and vigorous, and the new King Frederick stupid and slack; and we know, finally, that the Catholic army, commanded by the famous general Tilly, was far superior to the Protestant army under Christian of Anhalt. At last the Catholic army appeared before the walls of Prague. The battle of the White Hill was fought (November 8th, 1620). The new King, in the city, was entertaining some ambassadors to dinner. The Protestant army was routed, the new King fled from the country, and once again Bohemia lay crushed under the heel of the conqueror.

At this time the heel of the conqueror consisted in a certain Prince Lichtenstein. He was made regent of Prague, and was entrusted with the duty of restoring the country to order. He set about his work in a cool and methodical manner. He cleared the rabble out of the streets. He recalled the Jesuits. He ordered the Brethren out of the kingdom. He put a Roman Catholic Priest into every church in Prague; and then he made the strange announcement that all the rebels, as they were called, would be freely pardoned, and invited the leading Protestant nobles to appear before him at Prague. They walked into the trap like flies into a cobweb. If the nobles had only cared to do so, they might all have escaped after the battle of the White Hill; for Tilly, the victorious general, had purposely given them time to do so. But for some reason they nearly all preferred to stay. And now Lichtenstein had them in his grasp. He had forty-seven leaders arrested in one night. He imprisoned them in the castle tower, had them tried and condemned, obtained the approval of Ferdinand, and then, while some were pardoned, informed the remaining twenty-seven that they had two days in which to prepare for death. They were to die on June 21st. Among those leaders about a dozen were Brethren. We have arrived at the last act of the tragedy. We have seen the grim drama develop, and when the curtain falls the stage will be covered with corpses and blood.

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Of all the members of the Brethren’s Church, the most powerful and the most discontented was Baron Wenzel von Budowa. He was now fifty-six years of age. He had travelled in Germany, Denmark, Holland, England, France and Italy. He had studied at several famous universities. He had made the acquaintance of many learned men. He had entered the Imperial service, and served as ambassador at Constantinople. He had mastered Turkish and Arabic, had studied the Mohammedan religion, had published the Alcoran in Bohemian, and had written a treatise denouncing the creed and practice of Islam as Satanic in origin and character. He belonged to the Emperor’s Privy Council, and also to the Imperial Court of Appeal. He took part in theological controversies, and preached sermons to his tenants. He was the bosom friend of Baron Charles von Zerotin, the leading Brother of Moravia. He corresponded, from time to time, with the struggling Protestants in Hungary, and had now become the recognised leader, not only of the Brethren, but of all evangelicals in Bohemia.

He had one great purpose to attain. As the Brethren had rendered such signal service to the moral welfare of the land, it seemed to him absurd and unfair that they should still be under the ban of the law and still be denounced in Catholic pulpits as children of the devil. He resolved to remedy the evil. The Emperor, Rudolph II., paved the way. He was just the man that Budowa required. He was weak in body and in mind. He had ruined his health, said popular scandal, by indulging in dissolute pleasures. His face was shrivelled, his hair bleached, his back bent, his step tottering. He was too much interested in astrology, gems, pictures, horses, antique relics and similar curiosities to take much interest in government; he suffered from religious mania, and was constantly afraid of being murdered; and his daily hope and prayer was that he might be spared all needless trouble in this vexatious world and have absolutely nothing to do. And now he committed an act of astounding folly. He first revived the Edict of St. James, ordered the nobles throughout the land to turn out all Protestant pastors {1602-3.}, and sent a body of armed men to close the Brethren’s Houses at Jungbunzlau; and then, having disgusted two-thirds of his loyal subjects, he summoned a Diet, and asked for money for a crusade against the Turks. But this was more than Wenzel could endure. He attended the Diet, and made a brilliant speech. He had nothing, he said, to say against the Emperor. He would not blame him for reviving the musty Edict. For that he blamed some secret disturbers of the peace. If the Emperor needed money and men, the loyal knights and nobles of Bohemia would support him. But that support would be given on certain conditions. If the Emperor wished his subjects to be loyal, he must first obey the law of the land himself. “We stand,” he said, “one and all by the Confession of 1575, and we do not know a single person who is prepared to submit to the Consistory at Prague.” He finished, wept, prepared a petition, and sent it in to the poor invisible Rudolph. And Rudolph replied as Emperors sometimes do. He replied by closing the Diet.

Again, however, six years later, Budowa returned to the attack {1609.}. He was acting, not merely on behalf of the Brethren, but on behalf of all Protestants in the country. And this fact is the key to the situation. As we follow the dramatic story to its sad and tragic close, we must remember that from this time onward the Brethren, for all intents and purposes, had almost abandoned their position as a separate Church, and had cast in their lot, for good or evil, with the other Protestants in Bohemia. They were striving now for the recognition, not of their own Confession of Faith, but of the general Bohemian Protestant Confession presented to the Emperor, Maximilian II. And thus Budowa became a national hero. He called a meeting of Lutherans and Brethren in the historic “Green Saloon,” prepared a resolution demanding that the Protestant Confession be inscribed in the Statute Book, and, followed by a crowd of nobles and knights, was admitted to the sacred presence of the Emperor.

Again the Diet was summoned. The hall was crammed, and knights and nobles jostled each other in the corridors and in the square outside {Jan. 28th, 1609.}. For some weeks the Emperor, secluded in his cabinet, held to his point like a hero. The debate was conducted in somewhat marvellous fashion. There, in the Green Saloon, sat the Protestants, preparing proposals and petitions. There, in the Archbishop’s palace, sat the Catholics, rather few in number, and wondering what to do. And there, in his chamber, sat the grizzly, rickety, imperial Lion, consulting with his councillors, Martinic and Slawata, and dictating his replies. And then, when the king had his answer ready, the Diet met in the Council Chamber to hear it read aloud. His first reply was now as sharp as ever. He declared that the faith of the Church of Rome was the only lawful faith in Bohemia. “And as for these Brethren,” he said, “whose teaching has been so often forbidden by royal decrees and decisions of the Diet, I order them, like my predecessors, to fall in with the Utraquists or Catholics, and declare that their meetings shall not be permitted on any pretence whatever.”

In vain the Protestants, by way of reply, drew up a monster petition, and set forth their grievances in detail. They suffered, they said, not from actual persecution, but from nasty insults and petty annoyances. They were still described in Catholic pulpits as heretics and children of the devil. They were still forbidden to honour the memory of Hus. They were still forbidden to print books without the consent of the Archbishop. But the King snapped them short. He told the estates to end their babble, and again closed the Diet {March 31st.}.

The blood of Budowa was up. The debate, thought he, was fast becoming a farce. The King was fooling his subjects. The King must be taught a lesson. As the Diet broke up, he stood at the door, and shouted out in ringing tones: “Let all who love the King and the land, let all who care for unity and love, let all who remember the zeal of our fathers, meet here at six to-morrow morn.”

He spent the night with some trusty allies, prepared another declaration, met his friends in the morning, and informed the King, in language clear, that the Protestants had now determined to win their rights by force. And Budowa was soon true to his word. He sent envoys asking for help to the King’s brother Matthias, to the Elector of Saxony, to the Duke of Brunswick, and to other Protestant leaders. He called a meeting of nobles and knights in the courtyard of the castle, and there, with heads bared and right hands upraised, they swore to be true to each other and to win their liberty at any price, even at the price of blood. He arranged for an independent meeting in the town hall of the New Town. The King forbade the meeting. What better place, replied Budowa, would His Majesty like to suggest? As he led his men across the long Prague bridge, he was followed by thousands of supporters. He arrived in due time at the square in front of the hall. The Royal Captain appeared and ordered him off. The crowd jeered and whistled the Captain away.

And yet Budowa was no vulgar rebel. He insisted that every session in the hall should be begun and ended with prayer. He informed the King, again and again, that all he wished was liberty of worship for Protestants. He did his best to put an end to the street rows, the drunken brawls, that now disgraced the city.

For the third time the King summoned the Diet {May 25th.}. The last round in the terrible combat now began. He ordered the estates to appear in civilian’s dress. They arrived armed to the teeth. He ordered them to open the proceedings by attending Mass in the Cathedral. The Catholics alone obeyed; the Protestants held a service of their own; and yet, despite these danger signals, the King was as stubborn as ever, and again he sent a message to say that he held to his first decision. The Diet was thunderstruck, furious, desperate.

“We have had enough of useless talk,” said Count Matthias Thurn; “it is time to take to arms.” The long fight was drawing to a finish. As the King refused to listen to reason, the members of the Diet, one and all, Protestants and Catholics alike, prepared an ultimatum demanding that all evangelical nobles, knights, citizens and peasants should have full and perfect liberty to worship God in their own way, and to build schools and churches on all Royal estates; and, in order that the King might realise the facts of the case, Budowa formed a Board of thirty directors, of whom fourteen were Brethren, raised an army in Prague, and sent the nobles flying through the land to levy money and troops. The country, in fact, was now in open revolt. And thus, at length compelled by brute force, the poor old King gave way, and made his name famous in history by signing the Letter of Majesty and granting full religious liberty to all adherents of the Bohemian National Protestant Confession. All adherents of the Confession could worship as they pleased, and all classes, except the peasantry, could build schools and churches on Royal estates {July 9th.}. “No decree of any kind,” ran one sweeping clause, “shall be issued either by us or by our heirs and succeeding kings against the above established religious peace.”

The delight in Prague was boundless. The Letter of Majesty was carried through the streets in grand triumphal procession. The walls were adorned with flaming posters. The bells of the churches were rung. The people met in the Church of the Holy Cross, and there sang jubilant psalms of thanksgiving and praise. The King’s couriers posted through the land to tell the gladsome news; the letter was hailed as the heavenly herald of peace and goodwill to men; and Budowa was adored as a national hero, and the redresser of his people’s wrongs.

But the work of the Diet was not yet complete. As the Brethren, led by the brave Budowa, had borne the brunt of the battle, we naturally expect to find that now the victory was won, they would have the lion’s share of the spoils. But they really occupied a rather modest position. The next duty of the Diet was to make quite sure that the Letter of Majesty would not be broken. For this purpose they elected a Board of Twenty-four Defenders, and of these Defenders only eight were Brethren. Again, the Brethren had now to submit to the rule of a New National Protestant Consistory. Of that Consistory the Administrator was a Utraquist Priest; the next in rank was a Brethren’s Bishop; the total number of members was twelve; and of these twelve only three were Brethren. If the Brethren, therefore, were fairly represented, they must have constituted at this time about one-quarter or one-third of the Protestants in Bohemia.[50] They were now a part, in the eyes of the law, of the National Protestant Church. They were known as Utraquist Christians. They accepted the National Confession as their own standard of faith, and though they could still ordain their own priests, their candidates for the priesthood had first to be examined by the national Administrator.

And, further, the Brethren had now weakened their union with the Moravian and Polish branches. No longer did the three parts of the Church stand upon the same footing. In Poland the Brethren were still the leading body; in Moravia they were still independent; in Bohemia alone they bowed to the rule of others. And yet, in some important respects, they were still as independent as ever. They could still hold their own Synods and practise their own ceremonies; they still retained their own Confession of faith; they could still conduct their own schools and teach their Catechism; and they could still, above all, enforce as of old their system of moral discipline. And this they guarded as the apple of their eye.

As soon as the above arrangements were complete they addressed themselves to the important task of defining their own position. And for this purpose they met at a General Synod at Zerawic, and prepared a comprehensive descriptive work, entitled “Ratio Disciplinæ”—i.e., Account of Discipline.[51] It was a thorough, exhaustive, orderly code of rules and regulations. It was meant as a guide and a manifesto. It proved to be an epitaph. In the second place, the Brethren now issued (1615) a new edition of their Catechism, with the questions and answers in four parallel columns—Greek, Bohemian, German and Latin;[52] and thus, once more, they shewed their desire to play their part in national education.

Thus, at last, had the Brethren gained their freedom. They had crossed the Red Sea, had traversed the wilderness, had smitten the Midianites hip and thigh, and could now settle down in the land of freedom flowing with milk and honey.

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As the Emperor Maximilian II. set out from the Royal Castle in Prague for a drive he met a baron famous in all the land {1575.}. The baron was John von Zerotin, the richest member of the Brethren’s Church. He had come to Prague on very important business. His home lay at Namiest, in Moravia. He lived in a stately castle, built on two huge crags, and surrounded by the houses of his retainers and domestics. His estate was twenty-five miles square. He had a lovely park of beeches, pines and old oaks. He held his court in kingly style. He had gentlemen of the chamber of noble birth. He had pages and secretaries, equerries and masters of the chase. He had valets, lackeys, grooms, stable-boys, huntsmen, barbers, watchmen, cooks, tailors, shoemakers, and saddlers. He had sat at the feet of Blahoslaw, the learned Church historian: he kept a Court Chaplain, who was, of course, a pastor of the Brethren’s Church; and now he had come to talk things over with the head of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Emperor offered the Baron a seat in his carriage. The Brother and the Emperor drove on side by side.

“I hear,” said the Emperor, “that the Picards are giving up their religion and going over to the Utraquists.”

The Baron was astounded. He had never, he said, heard the slightest whisper that the Brethren intended to abandon their own Confessions.

“I have heard it,” said the Emperor, “as positive fact from Baron Hassenstein himself.”

“It is not true,” replied Zerotin.

“What, then,” said the Emperor, “do the Utraquists mean when they say that they are the true Hussites, and wish me to protect them in their religion?”

“Your gracious Majesty,” replied Zerotin, “the Brethren, called Picards, are the true Hussites: they have kept their faith unsullied, as you may see yourself from the Confession they presented to you.”[44] The Emperor looked puzzled. He was waxing old and feeble, and his memory was failing.

“What!” he said, “have the Picards got a Confession?”

He was soon to hear the real truth of the matter. For some months there had sat in Prague a committee of learned divines, who had met for the purpose of drawing up a National Protestant Bohemian Confession. The dream of Augusta seemed to be coming true. The Brethren took their part in the proceedings. “We are striving,” said Slawata, one of their deputies, “for peace, love and unity. We have no desire to be censors of dogmas. We leave such matters to theological experts.” The Confession[45] was prepared, read out at the Diet, and presented to the Emperor. It was a compromise between the teaching of Luther and the teaching of the Brethren. In its doctrine of justification by faith it followed the teaching of Luther: in its doctrine of the Lord’s Supper it inclined to the broader evangelical view of the Brethren. The Emperor attended the Diet in person, and made a notable speech.

“I promise,” he said, “on my honour as an Emperor, that I will never oppress or hinder you in the exercise of your religion; and I pledge my word in my own name and also in the name of my successors.”

Let us try to grasp the meaning of this performance. As the Edict of St. James was still in force, the Brethren, in the eyes of the law, were still heretics and rebels; they had no legal standing in the country; and at any moment the King in his fury might order them to quit the land once more. But the truth is that the King of Bohemia was now a mere figurehead. The real power lay in the hands of the barons. The barons were Protestant almost to a man.

As the Emperor lay dying a few months later in the castle of Regensburg, he was heard to murmur the words, “The happy time is come.” For the Brethren the happy time had come indeed. They knew that the so-called Utraquist Church was Utraquist only in name; they knew that the Bible was read in every village; they knew that Lutheran doctrines were preached in hundreds of Utraquist Churches; they knew that in their own country they had now more friends than foes; and thus, free from the terrors of the law they trod the primrose path of peace and power. We have come to the golden age of the Brethren’s Church.

It was the age of material prosperity. As the sun of freedom shone upon their way, the Brethren drifted further still from the old Puritan ascetic ideas of Peter and Gregory the Patriarch. They had now all classes in their ranks. They had seventeen rich and powerful barons, of the stamp of John Zerotin; they had over a hundred and forty knights; they had capitalists, flourishing tradesmen, mayors, and even generals in the Army, and the Lord High Chamberlain now complained that two-thirds of the people in Bohemia were Brethren.[46] Nor was this all. For many years the Brethren had been renowned as the most industrious and prosperous people in the country; and were specially famous for their manufacture of knives. They were noted for their integrity of character, and were able to obtain good situations as managers of estates, houses, wine cellars and mills; and in many of the large settlements, such as Jungbunzlau and Leitomischl, they conducted flourishing business concerns for the benefit of the Church at large. They made their settlements the most prosperous places in the country; they built hospitals; they had a fund for the poor called the Korbona; and on many estates they made themselves so useful that the barons, in their gratitude, set them free from the usual tolls and taxes. To the Brethren business was now a sacred duty. They had seen the evils of poverty, and they did their best to end them. They made no hard and fast distinction between secular and sacred; and the cooks and housemaids in the Brethren’s Houses were appointed by the Church, and called from one sphere of service to another, just as much as the presbyters and deacons. The clergy, though still doing manual labour, were now rather better off: the gardens and fields attached to the manses helped to swell their income; and, therefore, we are not surprised to hear that some of them were married.

Again, the Brethren were champions of education. They had seen the evil of their ways. As the exiles banished by Ferdinand I. came into contact with Lutherans in Prussia they heard, rather to their disgust, that they were commonly regarded by the German Protestants as a narrow-minded and benighted set of men; and, therefore, at the special invitation of the Lutheran Bishop Speratus, they began the practice of sending some of their students to foreign universities. It is pathetic to read how the first two students were sent {1549.}. “We granted them,” says the record, “their means of support. We gave them £7 10s. a-piece, and sent them off to Basle.” We are not informed how long the money was to last. For some years the new policy was fiercely opposed; and the leader of the opposition was John Augusta. He regarded this new policy with horror, condemned it as a falling away from the old simplicity and piety, and predicted that it would bring about the ruin of the Brethren’s Church. At the head of the progressive party was John Blahoslaw, the historian. He had been to Wittenberg and Basle himself; he was a master of Greek and Latin; and now he wrote a brilliant philippic, pouring scorn on the fears of the conservative party. “For my part,” he said, “I have no fear that learned and pious men will ever ruin the Church. I am far more afraid of the action of those high-minded and stupid schemers, who think more highly of themselves than they ought to think.” It is clear to whom these stinging words refer. They are a plain hit at Augusta. “It is absurd,” he continued, “to be afraid of learning and culture. As long as our leaders are guided by the Spirit of Christ, all will be well; but when craft and cunning, and worldly prudence creep in, then woe to the Brethren’s Church! Let us rather be careful whom we admit to the ministry, and then the Lord will preserve us from destruction.” As we read these biting words, we can understand how it came to pass that Augusta, during his last few years, was held in such little honour. The old man was behind the times. The progressive party triumphed. Before long there were forty students at foreign Universities. The whole attitude of the Brethren changed. As the Humanist movement spread in Bohemia, the Brethren began to take an interest in popular education; and now, aided by friendly nobles, they opened a number of free elementary schools. At Eibenschütz, in Moravia, they had a school for the sons of the nobility, with Esrom Rüdinger as headmaster; both Hebrew and Greek were taught; and the school became so famous that many of the pupils came from Germany. At Holleschau, Leitomischl, Landskron, Gross-Bitesch, Austerlitz, Fulneck, Meseretoch, Chropin, Leipnik, Kaunic, Trebitzch, Paskau, Ungarisch-Brod, Jungbunzlau, and Prerau, they had free schools supported by Protestant nobles and manned with Brethren’s teachers. As there is no direct evidence to the contrary, we may take it for granted that in these schools the syllabus was much the same as in the other schools of the country. In most the Latin language was taught, and in some dialectics, rhetoric, physics, astronomy and geometry. The education was largely practical. At most of the Bohemian schools in those days the children were taught, by means of conversation books, how to look after a horse, how to reckon with a landlord, how to buy cloth, how to sell a garment, how to write a letter, how to make terms with a pedlar, how, in a word, to get on in the world. But the Brethren laid the chief stress on religion. Instead of separating the secular and the sacred, they combined the two in a wonderful way, and taught both at the same time. For this purpose, they published, in the first place, a school edition of their Catechism in three languages, Bohemian, German, and Latin; and thus the Catechism became the scholar’s chief means of instruction. He learned to read from his Catechism; he learned Latin from his Catechism; he learned German from his Catechism; and thus, while mastering foreign tongues, he was being grounded at the same time in the articles of the Christian faith. He lived, in a word, from morning to night in a Christian atmosphere. For the same purpose a Brother named Matthias Martinus prepared a book containing extracts from the Gospels and Epistles. It was printed in six parallel columns. In the first were grammatical notes; in the second the text in Greek; in the third a translation in Bohemian; in the fourth in German; in the fifth in Latin; and in the sixth a brief exposition.

Second, the Brethren used another text-book called the “Book of Morals.” It was based, apparently, on Erasmus’s “Civilitas Morum.” It was a simple, practical guide to daily conduct. It was written in rhyme, and the children learned it by heart. It was divided into three parts. In the first, the child was taught how to behave from morning to night; in the second, how to treat his elders and masters; in the third, how to be polite at table.

Third, the Brethren, in all their schools, made regular use of hymn-books; and the scholar learnt to sing by singing hymns. Sometimes the hymns were in a separate volume; sometimes a selection was bound up with the Catechism. But in either case the grand result was the same. As we follow the later fortunes of the Brethren we shall find ourselves face to face with a difficult problem. How was it, we ask, that in later years, when their little Church was crushed to powder, these Brethren held the faith for a hundred years? How was it that the “Hidden Seed” had such vitality? How was it that, though forbidden by law, they held the fort till the times of revival came? For answer we turn to their Catechism. They had learned it first in their own homes; they had learned it later at school; they had made it the very marrow of their life; they taught it in turn to their children; and thus in the darkest hours of trial they handed on the torch of faith from one generation to another.

We come now to another secret of their strength. Of all the Protestants in Europe the Bohemian Brethren were the first to publish a Hymn-book; and by this time they had published ten editions. The first three were in Bohemian, and were edited by Luke of Prague, 1501, 1505, 1519; the fourth in German, edited by Michael Weiss, 1531; the fifth in Bohemian, edited by John Horn, 1541; the sixth in German, edited by John Horn, 1544; the seventh in Polish, edited by George Israel, 1554; the eighth in Bohemian, edited by John Blahoslaw, 1561; the ninth in German, 1566; the tenth in Polish, 1569. As they wished here to appeal to all classes, they published hymns both ancient and modern, and tunes both grave and gay. Among the hymn-writers were John Hus, Rockycana, Luke of Prague, Augusta, and Martin Luther; and among the tunes were Gregorian Chants and popular rondels of the day. The hymns and tunes were published in one volume. The chief purpose of the hymns was clear religious instruction. The Brethren had nothing to conceal. They had no mysterious secret doctrines; and no mysterious secret practices. They published their hymn-books, not for themselves only, but for all the people in the country, and for Evangelical Christians in other lands. “It has been our chief aim,” they said, “to let everyone fully and clearly understand what our views are with regard to the articles of the Christian faith.” And here the hymns were powerful preachers of the faith. They spread the Brethren’s creed in all directions. They were clear, orderly, systematic, and Scriptural; and thus they were sung in the family circle, by bands of young men in the Brethren’s Houses, by shepherds watching their flocks by night, by sturdy peasants as they trudged to market. And then, on Sunday, in an age when congregational singing was as yet but little known, the Brethren made the rafters ring with the sound of united praise. “Your churches,” wrote the learned Esrom Rüdinger, “surpass all others in singing. For where else are songs of praise, of thanksgiving, of prayer and instruction so often heard? Where is there better singing? The newest edition of the Bohemian Hymn-book, with its seven hundred and forty-three hymns, is an evidence of the multitude of your songs. Three hundred and forty-six have been translated into German. In your churches the people can all sing and take part in the worship of God.”

But of all the services rendered by the Brethren to the cause of the evangelical faith in Bohemia the noblest and the most enduring was their translation of the Bible into the Bohemian tongue. In the archives of the Brethren’s Church at Herrnhut are now to be seen six musty volumes known as the Kralitz Bible (1579-93). The idea was broached by Blahoslaw, the Church historian. The expense was born by Baron John von Zerotin. The actual printing was executed at Zerotin’s Castle at Kralitz. The translation was based, not on the Vulgate, but on the original Hebrew and Greek. The work of translating the Old Testament was entrusted to six Hebrew scholars, Aeneas, Cepollo, Streic, Ephraim, Jessen, and Capito. The New Testament was translated by Blahoslaw himself (1565). The work was of national interest. For the first time the Bohemian people possessed the Bible in a translation from the original tongue, with the chapters subdivided into verses, and the Apocrypha separated from the Canonical Books. The work appeared at first in cumbersome form. It was issued in six bulky volumes, with only eight or nine verses to a page, and a running commentary in the margin. The paper was strong, the binding dark brown, the page quarto, the type Latin, the style chaste and idiomatic, and the commentary fairly rich in broad practical theology. But all this was no use to the poor. For the benefit, therefore, of the common people the Brethren published a small thin paper edition in a plain calf binding. It contained an index of quotations from the Old Testament in the New, an index of proper names with their meanings, a lectionary for the Christian Year, references in the margin, and a vignette including the famous Brethren’s episcopal seal, “The Lamb and the Flag.” The size of the page was only five inches by seven and a half; the number of pages was eleven hundred and sixty; the paper was so remarkably thin that the book was only an inch and a quarter thick;[47] and thus it was suited in every way to hold the same place in the affections of the people that the Geneva Bible held in England in the days of our Puritan fathers. The Kralitz Bible was a masterpiece. It helped to fix and purify the language, and thus completed what Stitny and Hus had begun. It became the model of a chaste and simple style; and its beauty of language was praised by the Jesuits. It is a relic that can never be forgotten, a treasure that can never lose its value. It is issued now, word for word, by the British and Foreign Bible Society; it is read by the people in their own homes, and is used in the Protestant Churches of the country; and thus, as the Catholic, Gindely, says, it will probably endure as long as the Bohemian tongue is spoken.

But even this was not the end of the Brethren’s labours. We come to the most amazing fact in their history. On the one hand they were the greatest literary force in the country;[48] on the other they took the smallest part in her theological controversies. For example, take the case of John Blahoslaw. He was one of the most brilliant scholars of his day. He was master of a beautiful literary style. He was a member of the Brethren’s Inner Council. He wrote a “History of the Brethren.” He translated the New Testament into Bohemian. He prepared a standard Bohemian Grammar. He wrote also a treatise on Music, and other works too many to mention here. And yet, learned Bishop though he was, he wrote only one theological treatise, “Election through Grace,” and even here he handled his subject from a practical rather than a theological point of view.

Again, take the case of Jacob Bilek, Augusta’s companion in prison. If ever a man had just cause to hate the Church of Rome it was surely this humble friend of the great Augusta; and yet he wrote a full account of their dreary years in prison without saying one bitter word against his persecutors and tormentors.[49] From this point of view his book is delightful. It is full of piety, of trust in God, of vivid dramatic description; it has not a bitter word from cover to cover; and thus it is a beautiful and precious example of the broad and charitable spirit of the Brethren.

Again, it is surely instructive to note what subject most attracted the Brethren’s attention. For religious debate they cared but little; for history they had a consuming passion; and now their leading scholars produced the greatest historical works in the language. Brother Jaffet wrote a work on the Brethren’s Episcopal Orders, entitled, “The Sword of Goliath.” Wenzel Brezan wrote a history of the “House of Rosenberg,” containing much interesting information about Bohemian social life. Baron Charles von Zerotin wrote several volumes of memoirs. The whole interest of the Brethren now was broad and national in character. The more learned they grew the less part they took in theological disputes. They regarded such disputes as waste of time; they had no pet doctrines to defend; they were now in line with the other Protestants of the country; and they held that the soul was greater than the mind and good conduct best of all. No longer did they issue “Confessions of Faith” of their own; no longer did they lay much stress on their points of difference with Luther. We come here to a point of great importance. It has been asserted by some historians that the Brethren never taught the doctrine of Justification by Faith. For answer we turn to their later Catechism prepared (1554) by Jirek Gyrck.

“In what way,” ran one question, “can a sinful man obtain salvation?”

“By the pure Grace of God alone, through Faith in Jesus Christ our Lord who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”

What sort of picture does all this bring before us? It is the picture of a body of men who had made remarkable progress. No longer did they despise education; they fostered it more than any men in the country. No longer did they speak with contempt of marriage; they spoke of it as a symbol of holier things. It was time, thought some, for these broad-minded men to have their due reward. It was time to amend the insulting law, and tear the musty Edict of St. James to tatters.

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Meanwhile, John Augusta, the great leader of the Brethren, was passing through the furnace of affliction.

Of all the tools employed by Ferdinand, the most crafty, active and ambitious was a certain officer named Sebastian Schöneich, who, in the words of the great historian, Gindely, was one of those men fitted by nature for the post of hangman.

For some months this man had distinguished himself by his zeal in the cause of the King. He had seized sixteen heads of families for singing hymns at a baker’s funeral, had thrown them into the drain-vaults of the White Tower at Prague, and had left them there to mend their ways in the midst of filth and horrible stenches. And now he occupied the proud position of town-captain of Leitomischl. Never yet had he known such a golden chance of covering himself with glory. For some time Augusta, who was now First Senior of the Church, had been hiding in the neighbouring woods, and only two or three Brethren knew his exact abode. But already persecution had done her work, and treachery now did hers.

Among the inhabitants of Leitomischl were certain renegade Brethren, and these now said to the Royal Commissioners: “If the King could only capture and torture Augusta, he could unearth the whole conspiracy.”

“Where is Augusta?” asked the Commissioners.

“He is not at home,” replied the traitors, “but if you will ask his friend, Jacob Bilek, he will tell you all you want to know.”

The wily Schöneich laid his plot. If only he could capture Augusta, he would win the favour of the King and fill his own pockets with money. As he strolled one day through the streets of Leitomischl he met a certain innocent Brother Henry, and there and then began his deadly work.

“If you know,” he said, “where Augusta is, tell him I desire an interview with him. I will meet him wherever he likes. I have something special to say to him, something good, not only for him, but for the whole Brethren’s Church. But breathe not a word of this to anyone else. Not a soul—not even yourself—must know about the matter.”

The message to Augusta was sent. He replied that he would grant the interview on condition that Schöneich would guarantee his personal safety.

“That,” replied Schöneich, “is quite impossible. I cannot give any security whatever. The whole business must be perfectly secret. Not a soul must be present but Augusta and myself. I wouldn’t have the King know about this for a thousand groschen. Tell Augusta not to be afraid of me. I have no instructions concerning him. He can come with an easy mind to Leitomischl. If he will not trust me as far as that, let him name the place himself, and I will go though it be a dozen miles away.”

But Augusta still returned the same answer, and Schöneich had to strengthen his plea. Again he met the guileless Brother Henry, and again he stormed him with his eloquent tongue.

“Have you no better answer from Augusta?” he asked.

“No,” replied Brother Henry.

“My dear, my only Henry,” pleaded Schöneich, “I do so long for a little chat with Augusta. My heart bleeds with sympathy for you. I am expecting the King’s Commissioners. They may be here any moment. It will go hard with you poor folk when they come. If only I could have a talk with Augusta, it would be so much better for you all. But do tell him not to be afraid of me. I have no instructions concerning him. I will wager my neck for that,” he said, putting his finger to his throat. “I am willing to give my life for you poor Brethren.”

The shot went home. As Augusta lay in his safe retreat he had written stirring letters to the Brethren urging them to be true to their colours; and now, he heard from his friends in Leitomischl that Schöneich was an evangelical saint, and that if he would only confer with the saint he might render his Brethren signal service, and deliver them from their distresses. He responded nobly to the appeal. For the sake of the Church he had led so long, he would risk his liberty and his life. In vain the voice of prudence said “Stay!”; the voice of love said “Go!”; and Augusta agreed to meet the Captain in a wood three miles from the town. The Captain chuckled. The time was fixed, and, the night before, the artful plotter sent three of his trusty friends to lie in wait. As the morning broke of the fateful day {April 25th, 1548.}, Augusta, still suspecting a trap, sent his secretary, Jacob Bilek, in advance to spy the land; and the three brave men sprang out upon him and carried him off to Schöneich. And then, at the appointed hour, came John Augusta himself. He had dressed himself as a country peasant, carried a hoe in is hand, and strolled in the woodland whistling a merry tune. For the moment the hirelings were baffled. They seized him and let him go; they seized him again and let him go again; they seized him, for the third time, searched him, and found a fine handkerchief in his bosom.

“Ah,” said one of them, “a country peasant does not use a handkerchief like this.”

The game was up. Augusta stood revealed, and Schöneich, hearing the glorious news, came prancing up on his horse.

“My lord,” said Augusta, “is this what you call faith?”

“Did you never hear,” said Schöneich, “that promises made in the night are never binding? Did you never hear of a certain Jew with his red beard and yellow bag? Did you never hear of the mighty power of money? And where have you come from this morning? I hear you have plenty of money in your possession. Where is that money now?”

As they rode next day in a covered waggon on their way to the city of Prague, the Captain pestered Augusta with many questions.

“My dear Johannes,” said the jovial wag, “where have you been? With whom? Where are your letters and your clothes? Whose is this cap? Where did you get it? Who lent it to you? What do they call him? Where does he live? Where is your horse? Where is your money? Where are your companions?”

“Why do you ask so many questions?” asked Augusta.

“Because,” replied Schöneich, letting out the murder, “I want to be able to give information about you. I don’t want to be called a donkey or a calf.”

And now began for John Augusta a time of terrible testing. As the Captain rapped his questions out he was playing his part in a deadly game that involved the fate, not only of the Brethren’s Church, but of all evangelicals in the land.

For months King Ferdinand had longed to capture Augusta. He regarded him as the author of the Smalkald League; he regarded him as the deadliest foe of the Catholic faith in Europe; he regarded the peaceful Brethren as rebels of the vilest kind; and now that he had Augusta in his power he determined to make him confess the plot, and then, with the proof he desired in his hands, he would stamp out the Brethren’s Church for once and all.

For this purpose Augusta was now imprisoned in the White Tower at Prague. He was placed in the wine vaults below the castle, had heavy fetters on his hands and feet, and sat for days in a crunched position. The historic contest began. For two hours at a stretch the King’s examiners riddled Augusta with questions. “Who sent the letter to the King?”[41] they asked. “Where do the Brethren keep their papers and money? To whom did the Brethren turn for help when the King called on his subjects to support him? Who went with you to Wittenberg? For what and for whom did the Brethren pray.”

“They prayed,” said Augusta, “that God would incline the heart of the King to be gracious to us.”

“By what means did the Brethren defend themselves?”

“By patience,” replied Augusta.

“To whom did they apply for help?”

Augusta pointed to heaven.

As Augusta’s answers to all these questions were not considered satisfactory, they next endeavoured to sharpen his wits by torturing a German coiner in his presence; and when this mode of persuasion failed, they tortured Augusta himself. They stripped him naked. They stretched him face downwards on a ladder. They smeared his hips with boiling pitch. They set the spluttering mess on fire, and drew it off, skin and all, with a pair of tongs. They screwed him tightly in the stocks. They hung him up to the ceiling by a hook, with the point run through his flesh. They laid him flat upon his back and pressed great stones on his stomach. It was all in vain. Again they urged him to confess the part that he and the Brethren had played in the great revolt, and again Augusta bravely replied that the Brethren had taken no such part at all.

At this the King himself intervened. For some months he had been busy enough at Augsburg, assisting the Emperor in his work; but now he sent a letter to Prague, with full instructions how to deal with Augusta. If gentle measures did not succeed, then sterner measures, said he, must be employed. He had three new tortures to suggest. First, he said, let Augusta be watched and deprived of sleep for five or six days. Next, he must be strapped to a shutter, with his head hanging over one end; he must have vinegar rubbed into his nostrils; he must have a beetle fastened on to his stomach; and in this position, with his neck aching, his nostrils smarting, and the beetle working its way to his vitals, he must be kept for two days and two nights. And, third, if these measures did not act, he must be fed with highly seasoned food and allowed nothing to drink.

But these suggestions were never carried out. As the messenger hastened with the King’s billet-doux, and the Brethren on the northern frontier were setting out for Poland, Augusta and Bilek were on their way to the famous old castle of Pürglitz. For ages that castle, built on a rock, and hidden away in darkling woods, had been renowned in Bohemian lore. There the mother of Charles IV. had heard the nightingales sing; there the faithful, ran the story, had held John Ziska at bay; there had many a rebel suffered in the terrible “torture-tower”; and there Augusta and his faithful friend were to lie for many a long and weary day.

They were taken to Pürglitz in two separate waggons. They travelled by night and arrived about mid-day; they were placed in two separate cells, and for sixteen years the fortunes of the Brethren centred round Pürglitz Castle.

If the Bishop had been the vilest criminal, he could not have been more grossly insulted. For two years he had to share his cell with a vulgar German coiner; and the coiner, in facetious pastime, often smote him on the head.

His cell was almost pitch-dark. The window was shuttered within and without, and the merest glimmer from the cell next door struggled in through a chink four inches broad. At meals alone he was permitted half a candle. For bedding he had a leather bolster, a coverlet and what Germans call a “bed-sack.” For food he was allowed two rations of meat, two hunches of bread, and two jugs of barley-beer a day. His shirt was washed about once a fortnight, his face and hands twice a week, his head twice a year, and the rest of his body never. He was not allowed the use of a knife and fork. He was not allowed to speak to the prison attendants. He had no books, no papers, no ink, no news of the world without; and there for three years he sat in the dark, as lonely as the famous prisoner of Chillon. Again, by the King’s command, he was tortured, with a gag in his mouth to stifle his screams and a threat that if he would not confess he should have an interview with the hangman; and again he refused to deny his Brethren, and was flung back into his corner.

The delivering angel came in humble guise. Among the warders who guarded his cell was a daring youth who had lived at Leitomischl. He had been brought up among the Brethren. He regarded the Bishop as a martyr. His wife lived in a cottage near the castle; and now, drunken rascal though he was, he risked his life for Augusta’s sake, used his cottage as a secret post office, and handed in to the suffering Bishop letters, books, ink, paper, pens, money and candles.

The Brethren stationed a priest in Pürglitz village. The great Bishop was soon as bright and active as ever. By day he buried his tools in the ground; by night he plugged every chink and cranny, and applied himself to his labours. Not yet was his spirit broken; not yet was his mind unhinged. As his candle burned in that gloomy dungeon in the silent watches of the night, so the fire of his genius shone anew in those darksome days of trial and persecution; and still he urged his afflicted Brethren to be true to the faith of their fathers, to hold fast the Apostles’ Creed, and to look onward to the brighter day when once again their pathway would shine as the wings of a dove that are covered with silver and her feathers with yellow gold. He comforted Bilek in his affliction; he published a volume of sermons for the elders to read in secret; he composed a number of stirring and triumphant hymns; and there he penned the noble words still sung in the Brethren’s Church:—

   Praise God for ever.
   Boundless is his favour,
   To his Church and chosen flock,
   Founded on Christ the Rock.

As he lay in his cell he pondered much on the sad fate of his Brethren. At one time he heard a rumour that the Church was almost extinct. Some, he knew, had fled to Poland. Some had settled in Moravia. Some, robbed of lands and houses, were roaming the country as pedlars or earning a scanty living as farm labourers. And some, alas! had lowered the flag and joined the Church of Rome.

And yet Augusta had never abandoned hope. For ten years, despite a few interruptions, he kept in almost constant touch, not only with his own Brethren, but also with the Protestant world at large. He was still, he thought, the loved and honoured leader; he was still the mightiest religious force in the land; and now, in his dungeon, he sketched a plan to heal his country’s woes and form the true disciples of Christ into one grand national Protestant army against which both Pope and Emperor would for ever contend in vain.

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As the great Bishop Luke lay dying at Jungbunzlau, there was rising to fame among the Brethren the most brilliant and powerful leader they had ever known. Again we turn to the old Thein Church; again the preacher is denouncing the priests; and again in the pew is an eager listener with soul aflame with zeal. His name was John Augusta. He was born, in 1500, at Prague. His father was a hatter, and in all probability he learned the trade himself. He was brought up in the Utraquist Faith; he took the sacrament every Sunday in the famous old Thein Church; and there he heard the preacher declare that the priests in Prague cared for nothing but comfort, and that the average Christians of the day were no better than crack-brained heathen sprinkled with holy water. The young man was staggered; he consulted other priests, and the others told him the same dismal tale. One lent him a pamphlet, entitled “The Antichrist”; another lent him a treatise by Hus; and a third said solemnly: “My son, I see that God has more in store for you than I can understand.” But the strangest event of all was still to come. As he rode one day in a covered waggon with two priests of high rank, it so happened that one of them turned to Augusta and urged him to leave the Utraquist Church and join the ranks of the Brethren at Jungbunzlau. Augusta was horrified.

Again he consulted the learned priest; again he received the same strange counsel; and one day the priest ran after him, called him back, and said: “Listen, dear brother! I beseech you, leave us. You will get no good among us. Go to the Brethren at Bunzlau, and there your soul will find rest.” Augusta was shocked beyond measure. He hated the Brethren, regarded them as beasts, and had often warned others against them. But now he went to see them himself, and found to his joy that they followed the Scriptures, obeyed the Gospel and enforced their rules without respect of persons. For a while he was in a quandary. His conscience drew him to the Brethren, his honour held him to the Utraquists, and finally his own father confessor settled the question for him.

“Dear friend,” said the holy man, “entrust your soul to the Brethren. Never mind if some of them are hypocrites, who do not obey their own rules. It is your business to obey the rules yourself. What more do you want? If you return to us in Prague, you will meet with none but sinners and sodomites.”

And so, by the advice of Utraquist priests, this ardent young man joined the ranks of the Brethren, was probably trained in the Brethren’s House at Jungbunzlau, and was soon ordained as a minister. Forthwith he rose to fame and power in the pulpit. His manner was dignified and noble. His brow was lofty, his eye flashing, his bearing the bearing of a commanding king. He was a splendid speaker, a ready debater, a ruler of men, an inspirer of action; he was known ere long as the Bohemian Luther; and he spread the fame of the Brethren’s Church throughout the Protestant world. Full soon, in truth, he began his great campaign. As he entered on his work as a preacher of the Gospel, he found that among the younger Brethren there were quite a number who did not feel at all disposed to be bound by the warning words of Luke of Prague. They had been to the great Wittenberg University; they had mingled with Luther’s students; they had listened to the talk of Michael Weiss, who had been a monk at Breslau, and had brought Lutheran opinions with him; they admired both Luther and Melancthon; and they now resolved, with one consent, that if the candlestick of the Brethren’s Church was not to be moved from out its place, they must step shoulder to shoulder with Luther, become a regiment in the conquering Protestant army, and march with him to the goodly land where the flower of the glad free Gospel bloomed in purity and sweet perfume. At the first opportunity Augusta, their leader, brought forward their views. At a Synod held at Brandeis-on-the-Adler, summoned by Augusta’s friend, John Horn, the senior Bishop of the Church, for the purpose of electing some new Bishops, Augusta rose to address the assembly. He spoke in the name of the younger clergy, and immediately commenced an attack upon the old Executive Council. He accused them of listlessness and sloth; he said that they could not understand the spirit of the age, and he ended his speech by proposing himself and four other broad-minded men as members of the Council. The old men were shocked; the young were entranced; and Augusta was elected and consecrated a Bishop, and thus, at the age of thirty-two, became the leader of the Brethren’s Church. He had three great schemes in view; first, friendly relations with Protestants in other countries; second, legal recognition of the Brethren in Bohemia; third, the union of all Bohemian Protestants.

First, then, with Augusta to lead them on, the Brethren enlisted in the Protestant army, and held the banner of their faith aloft that all the world might see. As the Protestants in Germany had issued the Confession of Augsburg, and had it read in solemn style before the face of the Emperor, Charles V., so now the Brethren issued a new and full “Confession of Faith,” to be sent first to George, Margrave of Brandenburg, and then laid in due time before Ferdinand, King of Bohemia. It was a characteristic Brethren’s production.[35] It is perfectly clear from this Confession that the Brethren had separated from Rome for practical rather than dogmatic reasons. It is true the Brethren realised the value of faith; it is true the Confession contained the sentence, “He is the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world; and whosoever believeth in Him and calleth on His name shall be saved”; but even now the Brethren did not, like Luther, lay stress on the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And yet Luther had no fault to find with this Confession. It was addressed to him, was printed at Wittenberg, was issued with his consent and approval, and was praised by him in a preface. It was read and approved by John Calvin, by Martin Bucer, by Philip Melancthon, by pious old George, Margrave of Brandenburg, and by John Frederick, Elector of Saxony. Again and again the Brethren sent deputies to see the great Protestant leaders. At Wittenberg, Augusta discussed good morals with Luther and Melancthon; and at Strasburg, Cerwenka, the Brethren’s historian, held friendly counsel with Martin Bucer and Calvin. Never had the Brethren been so widely known, and never had they received so many compliments. Formerly Luther, who liked plain speech, had called the Brethren “sour-looking hypocrites and self-grown saints, who believe in nothing but what they themselves teach.” But now he was all good humour. “There never have been any Christians,” he said, in a lecture to his students, “so like the apostles in doctrine and constitution as these Bohemian Brethren.”

“Tell your Brethren,” he said to their deputies, “to hold fast what God has given them, and never give up their constitution and discipline. Let them take no heed of revilements. The world will behave foolishly. If you in Bohemia were to live as we do, what is said of us would be said of you, and if we were to live as you do, what is said of you would be said of us.” “We have never,” he added, in a letter to the Brethren, “attained to such a discipline and holy life as is found among you, but in the future we shall make it our aim to attain it.”

The other great Reformers were just as enthusiastic. “How shall I,” said Bucer, “instruct those whom God Himself has instructed! You alone, in all the world, combine a wholesome discipline with a pure faith.” “We,” said Calvin, “have long since recognised the value of such a system, but cannot, in any way, attain to it.” “I am pleased,” said Melancthon, “with the strict discipline enforced in your congregations. I wish we could have a stricter discipline in ours.” It is clear what all this means. It means that the Brethren, in their humble way, had taught the famous Protestant leaders the value of a system of Church discipline and the need of good works as the proper fruit of faith.

Meanwhile Augusta pushed his second plan. The task before him was gigantic. A great event had taken place in Bohemia. At the battle of Mohacz, in a war with the Turks, Louis, King of Bohemia, fell from his horse when crossing a stream, and was drowned {1526.}. The old line of Bohemian Kings had come to an end. The crown fell into the hands of the Hapsburgs; the Hapsburgs were the mightiest supporters of the Church of Rome; and the King of Bohemia, Ferdinand I., was likewise King of Hungary, Archduke of Austria, King of the Romans, and brother of the Emperor Charles V., the head of the Holy Roman Empire.

For the Brethren the situation was momentous. As Augusta scanned the widening view, he saw that the time was coming fast when the Brethren, whether they would or no, would be called to play their part like men in a vast European conflict. Already the Emperor Charles V. had threatened to crush the Reformation by force; already (1530) the Protestant princes in Germany had formed the Smalkald League; and Augusta, scenting the battle from afar, resolved to build a fortress for the Brethren. His policy was clear and simple. If the King of Bohemia joined forces with the Emperor, the days of the Brethren’s Church would soon be over. He would make the King of Bohemia their friend, and thus save the Brethren from the horrors of war. For this purpose Augusta now instructed the powerful Baron, Conrad Krajek, the richest member of the Brethren’s Church, to present the Brethren’s Confession of Faith to King Ferdinand. The Baron undertook the task. He was the leader of a group of Barons who had recently joined the Church; he had built the great Zbor of the Brethren in Jungbunzlau, known as “Mount Carmel”; he had been the first to suggest a Confession of Faith, and now, having signed the Confession himself, he sought out the King at Vienna, and was admitted to a private interview {Nov. 11th, 1535.}. The scene was stormy. “We would like to know,” said the King, “how you Brethren came to adopt this faith. The devil has persuaded you.”

“Not the devil, gracious liege,” replied the Baron, “but Christ the Lord through the Holy Scriptures. If Christ was a Picard, then I am one too.”

The King was beside himself with rage.

“What business,” he shouted, “have you to meddle with such things? You are neither Pope, nor Emperor, nor King. Believe what you will! We shall not prevent you! If you really want to go to hell, go by all means!”

The Baron was silent. The King paused.

“Yes, yes,” he continued, “you may believe what you like and we shall not prevent you; but all the same, I give you warning that we shall put a stop to your meetings, where you carry on your hocus-pocus.”

The Baron was almost weeping.

“Your Majesty,” he protested, “should not be so hard on me and my noble friends. We are the most loyal subjects in your kingdom.”

The King softened, spoke more gently, but still held to his point.

“I swore,” he said, “at my coronation to give justice to the Utraquists and Catholics, and I know what the statute says.”

As the King spoke those ominous words, he was referring, as the Baron knew full well, to the terrible Edict of St. James. The interview ended; the Baron withdrew; the issue still hung doubtful.

And yet the Baron had not spoken in vain. For three days the King was left undisturbed; and then two other Barons appeared and presented the Confession, signed by twelve nobles and thirty-three knights, in due form {Nov. 14th}.

“Do you really think,” they humbly said, “that it helps the unity of the kingdom when priests are allowed to say in the pulpit that it is less sinful to kill a Picard than it is to kill a dog.”

The King was touched; his anger was gone, and a week later he promised the Barons that as long as the Brethren were loyal subjects he would allow them to worship as they pleased. For some years the new policy worked very well, and the King kept his promise. The Brethren were extending on every hand. They had now at least four hundred churches and two hundred thousand members. They printed and published translations of Luther’s works. They had a church in the city of Prague itself. They enjoyed the favour of the leading nobles in the land; and Augusta, in a famous sermon, expressed the hope that before very long the Brethren and Utraquists would be united and form one National Protestant Church.[36] At this point a beautiful incident occurred. As the Brethren were now so friendly with Luther, there was a danger that they would abandon their discipline, become ashamed of their own little Church, and try to imitate the teaching and practice of their powerful Protestant friends. For some years after Luke’s death they actually gave way to this temptation, and Luke’s last treatise, “Regulations for Priests,” was scornfully cast aside. But the Brethren soon returned to their senses. As John Augusta and John Horn travelled in Germany, they made the strange and startling discovery that, after all, the Brethren’s Church was the best Church they knew. For a while they were dazzled by the brilliance of the Lutheran preachers; but in the end they came to the conclusion that though these preachers were clever men they had not so firm a grip on Divine truth as the Brethren. At last, in 1546, the Brethren met in a Synod at Jungbunzlau to discuss the whole situation. With tears in his eyes John Horn addressed the assembly. “I have never understood till now,” he said, “what a costly treasure our Church is. I have been blinded by the reading of German books! I have never found any thing so good in those books as we have in the books of the Brethren. You have no need, beloved Brethren, to seek for instruction from others. You have enough at home. I exhort you to study what you have already; you will find there all you need.” Again the discipline was revived in all its vigour; again, by Augusta’s advice, the Catechism of Luke was put into common use, and the Brethren began to open schools and teach their principles to others.

But now their fondest hopes were doomed to be blasted. For the last time Augusta went to Wittenberg to discuss the value of discipline with Luther, and as his stay drew to a close he warned the great man that if the German theologians spent so much time in spinning doctrines and so little time in teaching morals, there was danger brewing ahead. The warning soon came true. The Reformer died. The gathering clouds in Germany burst, and the Smalkald War broke out. The storm swept on to Bohemia. As the Emperor gathered his forces in Germany to crush the Protestant Princes to powder, so Ferdinand in Bohemia summoned his subjects to rally round his standard at Leitmeritz and defend the kingdom and the throne against the Protestant rebels. For the first time in their history the Bohemian Brethren were ordered to take sides in a civil war. The situation was delicate. If they fought for Ferdinand they would be untrue to their faith; if they fought against him they would be disloyal to their country. In this dilemma they did the best they could.

As soon as they could possibly do so, the Elders issued a form of prayer to be used in all their churches. It was a prayer for the kingdom and the throne.[37] But meanwhile others were taking definite sides. At Leitmeritz the Catholics and old-fashioned Utraquists mustered to fight for the King; and at Prague the Protestant nobles met to defend the cause of religious liberty. They met in secret at a Brother’s House; they formed a Committee of Safety of eight, and of those eight four were Brethren; and they passed a resolution to defy the King, and send help to the German Protestant leader, John Frederick, Elector of Saxony.

And then the retribution fell like a bolt from the blue. The great battle of Mühlberg was fought {April 24th, 1547.}; the Protestant troops were routed; the Elector of Saxony was captured; the Emperor was master of Germany, and Ferdinand returned to Prague with vengeance written on his brow. He called a council at Prague Castle, summoned the nobles and knights before him, ordered them to deliver up their treasonable papers, came down on many with heavy fines, and condemned the ringleaders to death.

At eight in the morning, August 22nd, four Barons were led out to execution in Prague, and the scaffold was erected in a public place that all the people might see and learn a lesson. Among the Barons was Wenzel Petipesky, a member of the Brethren’s Church. He was to be the first to die. As he was led from his cell by the executioner, he called out in a loud voice, which could be heard far and wide: “My dear Brethren, we go happy in the name of the Lord, for we go in the narrow way.” He walked to the scaffold with his hands bound before him, and two boys played his dead march on drums. As he reached the scaffold the drums ceased, and the executioner announced that the prisoner was dying because he had tried to dethrone King Ferdinand and put another King in his place.

“That,” said Petipesky, “was never the case.”

“Never mind, my Lord,” roared the executioner, “it will not help you now.”

“My God,” said Petipesky, “I leave all to Thee;” and his head rolled on the ground.

But the worst was still to come. As Ferdinand came out of the castle church on Sunday morning, September 18th, he was met by a deputation of Utraquists and Catholics, who besought him to protect them against the cruelties inflicted on them by the Picards. The King soon eased their minds. He had heard a rumour that John Augusta was the real leader of the revolt; he regarded the Brethren as traitors; he no longer felt bound by his promise to spare them; and, therefore, reviving the Edict of St. James, he issued an order that all their meetings should be suppressed, all their property be confiscated, all their churches be purified and transformed into Romanist Chapels, and all their priests be captured and brought to the castle in Prague {Oct. 8th, 1547.}. The Brethren pleaded not guilty.[38] They had not, as a body, taken any part in the conspiracy against the King. Instead of plotting against him, in fact, they had prayed and fasted in every parish for the kingdom and the throne. If the King, they protested, desired to punish the few guilty Brethren, by all means let him do so; but let him not crush the innocent many for the sake of a guilty few. “My word,” replied the King, “is final.” The Brethren continued to protest. And the King retorted by issuing an order that all Brethren who lived on Royal estates must either accept the Catholic Faith or leave the country before six weeks were over {May, 1548.}.

And never was King more astounded and staggered than Ferdinand at the result of this decree.

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As we have now arrived at that bend in the lane, when the Brethren, no longer marching alone, became a regiment in the conquering Protestant army, it will be convenient to halt in our story and look at the Brethren a little more closely—at their homes, their trades, their principles, their doctrines, their forms of service, and their life from day to day. After all, what were these Brethren, and how did they live?

They called themselves Jednota Bratrska—i.e., the Church of the Brethren. As this word “Jednota” means union, and is used in this sense in Bohemia at the present day, it is possible that the reader may think that instead of calling the Brethren a Church, we ought rather to call them the Union or Unity of the Brethren. If he does, however, he will be mistaken. We have no right to call the Brethren a mere Brotherhood or Unity. They regarded themselves as a true apostolic Church. They believed that their episcopal orders were valid. They called the Church of Rome a Jednota;[24] they called the Lutheran Church a Jednota;[25] they called themselves a Jednota; and, therefore, if the word Jednota means Church when applied to Lutherans and Roman Catholics, it must also mean Church when applied to the Bohemian Brethren. It is not correct to call them the Unitas Fratrum. The term is misleading. It suggests a Brotherhood rather than an organized Church. We have no right to call them a sect; the term is a needless insult to their memory.[26] As the Brethren settled in the Valley of Kunwald, the great object which they set before them was to recall to vigorous life the true Catholic Church of the Apostles; and as soon as they were challenged by their enemies to justify their existence, they replied in good set terms.

“Above all things,” declared the Brethren, at a Synod held in 1464, “we are one in this purpose. We hold fast the faith of the Lord Christ. We will abide in the righteousness and love of God. We will trust in the living God. We will do good works. We will serve each other in the spirit of love. We will lead a virtuous, humble, gentle, sober, patient and pure life; and thereby shall we know that we hold the faith in truth, and that a home is prepared for us in heaven. We will show obedience to one another, as the Holy Scriptures command. We will take from each other instruction, reproof and punishment, and thus shall we keep the covenant established by God through the Lord Christ.”[27] To this purpose the Brethren held firm. In every detail of their lives—in business, in pleasure, in civil duties—they took the Sermon on the Mount as the lamp unto their feet. From the child to the old man, from the serf to the lord, from the acoluth to the bishop, the same strict law held good. What made the Brethren’s Church shine so brightly in Bohemia before Luther’s days was not their doctrine, but their lives; not their theory, but their practice; not their opinions, but their discipline. Without that discipline they would have been a shell without a kernel. It called forth the admiration of Calvin, and drove Luther to despair. It was, in truth, the jewel of the Church, her charm against foes within and without; and so great a part did it play in their lives that in later years they were known to some as “Brethren of the Law of Christ.”

No portion of the Church was more carefully watched than the ministers. As the chief object which the Brethren set before them was obedience to the Law of Christ, it followed, as the night the day, that the chief quality required in a minister was not theological learning, but personal character. When a man came forward as a candidate for the ministry he knew that he would have to stand a most searching examination. His character and conduct were thoroughly sifted. He must have a working knowledge of the Bible, a blameless record, and a living faith in God. For classical learning the Brethren had an honest contempt. It smacked too much of Rome and monkery. As long as the candidate was a holy man, and could teach the people the plain truths of the Christian faith, they felt that nothing more was required, and did not expect him to know Greek and Hebrew. In vain Luther, in a friendly letter, urged them to cultivate more knowledge. “We have no need,” they replied, “of teachers who understand other tongues, such as Greek and Hebrew. It is not our custom to appoint ministers who have been trained at advanced schools in languages and fine arts. We prefer Bohemians and Germans who have come to a knowledge of the truth through personal experience and practical service, and who are therefore qualified to impart to others the piety they have first acquired themselves. And here we are true to the law of God and the practice of the early Church.”[28] Instead of regarding learning as an aid to faith, they regarded it as an hindrance and a snare. It led, they declared, to wordy battles, to quarrels, to splits, to uncertainties, to doubts, to corruptions. As long, they said, as the ministers of the Church of Christ were simple and unlettered men, so long was the Church a united body of believers; but as soon as the parsons began to be scholars, all sorts of evils arose. What good, they argued, had learning done in the past? It had caused the translation of the Bible into Latin, and had thus hidden its truths from the common people. “And therefore,” they insisted, “we despise the learning of tongues.”

For this narrow attitude they had also another reason. In order to be true to the practice of the early Christian Church, they laid down the strict rule that all ministers should earn their living by manual labour; and the result was that even if a minister wished to study he could not find time to do so. For his work as a minister he never received a penny. If a man among the Brethren entered the ministry, he did so for the pure love of the work. He had no chance of becoming rich. He was not allowed to engage in a business that brought in large profits. If he earned any more in the sweat of his brow than he needed to make ends meet, he was compelled to hand the surplus over to the general funds of the Church; and if some one kindly left him some money, that money was treated in the same way. He was to be as moderate as possible in eating and drinking; he was to avoid all gaudy show in dress and house; he was not to go to fairs and banquets; and, above all, he was not to marry except with the consent and approval of the Elders. Of marriage the Brethren had rather a poor opinion. They clung still to the old Catholic view that it was less holy than celibacy. “It is,” they said, “a good thing if two people find that they cannot live continent without it.” If a minister married he was not regarded with favour; he was supposed to have been guilty of a fleshly weakness; and it is rather sarcastically recorded in the old “Book of the Dead” that in every case in which a minister failed in his duties, or was convicted of immorality, the culprit was a married man.

And yet, for all his humble style, the minister was held in honour. As the solemn time of ordination drew near there were consultations of ministers with closed doors, and days set apart for fasting and prayer throughout the whole Church. His duties were many and various. He was commonly spoken of, not as a priest, but as the “servant” of the Church. He was not a priest in the Romish sense of the word. He had no distinctive sacerdotal powers. He had no more power to consecrate the Sacrament than any godly layman. Of priests as a separate class the Brethren knew nothing. All true believers in Christ, said they, were priests. We can see this from one of their regulations. As the times were stormy, and persecution might break out at any moment, the Brethren (at a Synod in 1504) laid down the rule that when their meetings at Church were forbidden they should be held in private houses, and then, if a minister was not available, any godly layman was authorised to conduct the Holy Communion.[29] And thus the minister was simply a useful “servant.” He gave instruction in Christian doctrine. He heard confessions. He expelled sinners. He welcomed penitents. He administered the Sacraments. He trained theological students. If he had the needful gift, he preached; if not, he read printed sermons. He was not a ruler lording it over the flock; he was rather a “servant” bound by rigid rules. He was not allowed to select his own topics for sermons; he had to preach from the Scripture lesson appointed for the day. He was bound to visit every member of his congregation at least once a quarter; he was bound to undertake any journey or mission, however dangerous, at the command of the Elders; and he was bound, for a fairly obvious reason, to take a companion with him when he called at the houses of the sick. If he went alone he might practise as a doctor, and give dangerous medical advice; and that, said the Brethren, was not his proper business. He was not allowed to visit single women or widows. If he did, there might be scandals about him, as there were about the Catholic priests. For the spiritual needs of all unmarried women the Brethren made special provision. They were visited by a special “Committee of Women,” and the minister was not allowed to interfere.

The good man did not even possess a home of his own. Instead of living in a private manse he occupied a set of rooms in a large building known as the Brethren’s House; and the minister, as the name implies, was not the only Brother in it. “As Eli had trained Samuel, as Elijah had trained Elisha, as Christ had trained His disciples, as St. Paul trained Timothy and Titus,” so a minister of the Brethren had young men under his charge. There, under the minister’s eye, the candidates for service in the Church were trained. Neither now nor at any period of their history had the Bohemian Brethren any theological colleges. If a boy desired to become a minister he entered the Brethren’s House at an early age, and was there taught a useful trade. Let us look at the inmates of the House.

First in order, next to the Priest himself, were the Deacons. They occupied a double position. They were in the first stage of priesthood, and in the last stage of preparation for it. Their duties were manifold. They supplied the out-preaching places. They repeated the pastor’s sermon to those who had not been able to attend the Sunday service. They assisted at the Holy Communion in the distribution of the bread and wine. They preached now and then in the village Church to give their superior an opportunity for criticism and correction. They managed the domestic affairs of the house. They acted as sacristans or churchwardens. They assisted in the distribution of alms, and took their share with the minister in manual labour; and then, in the intervals between these trifling duties, they devoted their time to Bible study and preparation for the ministry proper. No wonder they never became very scholarly pundits; and no wonder that when they went off to preach their sermons had first to be submitted to the head of the house for approval.

Next to the Deacons came the Acoluths, young men or boys living in the same building and preparing to be Deacons. They were trained by the minister, very often from childhood upwards. They rang the bell and lighted the candles in the Church, helped the Deacons in household arrangements, and took turns in conducting the household worship. Occasionally they were allowed to deliver a short address in the Church, and the congregation “listened with kindly forbearance.” When they were accepted by the Synod as Acoluths they generally received some Biblical name, which was intended to express some feature in the character. It is thus that we account for such names as Jacob Bilek and Amos Comenius.

Inside this busy industrial hive the rules were rigid. The whole place was like a boarding-school or college. At the sound of a bell all rose, and then came united prayer and Scripture reading; an hour later a service, and then morning study. As the afternoon was not considered a good time for brain work, the Brethren employed it in manual labour, such as weaving, gardening and tailoring. In the evening there was sacred music and singing. At meal times the Acoluths recited passages of Scripture, or read discourses, or took part in theological discussions.

No one could leave the house without the pastor’s permission, and the pastor himself could not leave his parish without the Bishop’s permission. If he travelled at all he did so on official business, and then he lodged at other Brethren’s Houses, when the Acoluths washed his feet and attended to his personal comforts.

The Brethren’s rules struck deeper still. As the Brethren despised University education, it is natural to draw the plain conclusion that among them the common people were the most benighted and ignorant in the land. The very opposite was the case. Among them the common people were the most enlightened in the country. Of the Bohemian people, in those days, there were few who could read or write; of the Brethren there was scarcely one who could not. If the Brethren taught the people nothing else, they at least taught them to read their native tongue; and their object in this was to spread the knowledge of the Bible, and thus make the people good Protestants. But in those days a man who could read was regarded as a prodigy of learning. The result was widespread alarm. As the report gained ground that among the Brethren the humblest people could read as well as the priest, the good folk in Bohemia felt compelled to concoct some explanation, and the only explanation they could imagine was that the Brethren had the special assistance of the devil.[30] If a man, said they, joined the ranks of the Brethren, the devil immediately taught him the art of reading, and if, on the other hand, he deserted the Brethren, the devil promptly robbed him of the power, and reduced him again to a wholesome benighted condition. “Is it really true,” said Baron Rosenberg to his dependant George Wolinsky, “that the devil teaches all who become Picards to read, and that if a peasant leaves the Brethren he is able to read no longer?”

In this instance, however, the devil was innocent. The real culprit was Bishop Luke of Prague. Of all the services rendered by Luke to the cause of popular education and moral and spiritual instruction, the greatest was his publication of his “Catechism for Children,” commonly known as “The Children’s Questions.” It was a masterly and comprehensive treatise. It was published first, of course, in the Bohemian language {1502.}. It was published again in a German edition for the benefit of the German members of the Church {1522.}. It was published again, with some alterations, by a Lutheran at Magdeburg {1524.}. It was published again, with more alterations, by another Lutheran, at Wittenberg {1525.}. It was published again, in abridged form, at Zürich, and was recommended as a manual of instruction for the children at St. Gallen {1527.}. And thus it exercised a profound influence on the whole course of the Reformation, both in Germany and in Switzerland. For us, however, the point of interest is its influence in Bohemia and Moravia. It was not a book for the priests. It was a book for the fathers of families. It was a book found in every Brother’s home. It was the children’s “Reader.” As the boys and girls grew up in the Brethren’s Church, they learned to read, not in national schools, but in their own homes; and thus the Brethren did for the children what ought to have been done by the State. Among them the duties of a father were clearly defined. He was both a schoolmaster and a religious instructor. He was the priest in his own family. He was to bring his children up in the Christian faith. He was not to allow them to roam at pleasure, or play with the wicked children of the world. He was to see that they were devout at prayers, respectful in speech, and noble and upright in conduct. He was not to allow brothers and sisters to sleep in the same room, or boys and girls to roam the daisied fields together. He was not to strike his children with a stick or with his fists. If he struck them at all, he must do so with a cane. Above all, he had to teach his children the Catechism. They were taught by their parents until they were twelve years old; they were then taken in hand by their sponsors; and thus they were prepared for Confirmation, not as in the Anglican Church, by a clergyman only, but partly by their own parents and friends.

The Brethren’s rules struck deeper still. For law and order the Brethren had a passion. Each congregation was divided into three classes: the Beginners, those who were learning the “Questions” and the first elements of religion; the Proficients, the steady members of the Church; and the Perfect, those so established in faith, hope and love as to be able to enlighten others. For each class a separate Catechism was prepared. At the head, too, of each congregation was a body of civil Elders. They were elected by the congregation from the Perfect. They assisted the pastor in his parochial duties. They looked after his support in case he were in special need. They acted as poor-law guardians, lawyers, magistrates and umpires, and thus they tried to keep the people at peace and prevent them from going to law. Every three months they visited the houses of the Brethren, and inquired whether business were honestly conducted, whether family worship were held, whether the children were properly trained. For example, it was one of the duties of a father to talk with his children at the Sunday dinner-table on what they had heard at the morning service; and when the Elder paid his quarterly visit he soon discovered, by examining the children, how far this duty had been fulfilled.

The Brethren’s rules struck deeper still. For the labourer in the field, for the artizan in the workshop, for the tradesman with his wares, for the baron and his tenants, for the master and his servants, there were laws and codes to suit each case, and make every trade and walk in life serve in some way to the glory of God. Among the Brethren all work was sacred. If a man was not able to show that his trade was according to the law of Christ and of direct service to His holy cause, he was not allowed to carry it on at all. He must either change his calling or leave the Church. In the Brethren’s Church there were no dice makers, no actors, no painters, no professional musicians, no wizards or seers, no alchemists, no astrologers, no courtezans or panderers. The whole tone was stern and puritanic. For art, for music, for letters and for pleasure the Brethren had only contempt, and the fathers were warned against staying out at night and frequenting the card-room and the liquor-saloon. And yet, withal, these stern Brethren were kind and tender-hearted. If the accounts handed down are to be believed, the villages where the Brethren settled were the homes of happiness and peace. As the Brethren had no definite social policy, they did not, of course, make any attempt to break down the distinctions of rank; and yet, in their own way, they endeavoured to teach all classes to respect each other. They enjoined the barons to allow their servants to worship with them round the family altar. They urged the rich to spend their money on the poor instead of on dainties and fine clothes. They forbade the poor to wear silk, urged them to be patient, cheerful and industrious, and reminded them that in the better land their troubles would vanish like dew before the rising sun. For the poorest of all, those in actual need, they had special collections several times a year. The fund was called the Korbona, and was managed by three officials. The first kept the box, the second the key, the third the accounts. And the rich and poor had all to bow to the same system of discipline. There were three degrees of punishment. For the first offence the sinner was privately admonished. For the second he was rebuked before the Elders, and excluded from the Holy Communion until he repented. For the third he was denounced in the Church before the whole congregation, and the loud “Amen” of the assembled members proclaimed his banishment from the Brethren’s Church.

The system of government was Presbyterian. At the head of the whole Brethren’s Church was a board, called the “Inner Council,” elected by the Synod. Next came the Bishops, elected also by the Synod. The supreme authority was this General Synod. It consisted of all the ministers. As long as the Inner Council held office they were, of course, empowered to enforce their will; but the final court of appeal was the Synod, and by the Synod all questions of doctrine and policy were settled.

The doctrine was simple and broad. As the Brethren never had a formal creed, and never used their “Confessions of Faith” as tests, it may seem a rather vain endeavour to inquire too closely into their theological beliefs. And yet, on the other hand, we know enough to enable the historian to paint a life-like picture. For us the important question is, what did the Brethren teach their children? If we know what the Brethren taught their children we know what they valued most; and this we have set before us in the Catechism drawn up by Luke of Prague and used as an authorised manual of instruction in the private homes of the Brethren. It contained no fewer than seventy-six questions. The answers are remarkably full, and therefore we may safely conclude that, though it was not an exhaustive treatise, it gives us a wonderfully clear idea of the doctrines which the Brethren prized most highly. It is remarkable both for what it contains and for what it does not contain. It has no distinct and definite reference to St. Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith. It is Johannine rather than Pauline in its tone. It contains a great deal of the teaching of Christ and a very little of the teaching of St. Paul. It has more to say about the Sermon on the Mount than about any system of dogmatic theology. For one sentence out of St. Paul’s Epistles it has ten out of the Gospel of St. Matthew. As we read the answers in this popular treatise, we are able to see in what way the Brethren differed from the Lutheran Protestants in Germany. They approached the whole subject of Christian life from a different point of view. They were less dogmatic, less theological, less concerned about accurate definition, and they used their theological terms in a broader and freer way. For example, take their definition of faith. We all know the definition given by Luther. “There are,” said Luther, “two kinds of believing: first, a believing about God which means that I believe that what is said of God is true. This faith is rather a form of knowledge than a faith. There is, secondly, a believing in God which means that I put my trust in Him, give myself up to thinking that I can have dealings with Him, and believe without any doubt that He will be and do to me according to the things said of Him. Such faith, which throws itself upon God, whether in life or in death, alone makes a Christian man.” But the Brethren gave the word faith a richer meaning. They made it signify more than trust in God. They made it include both hope and love. They made it include obedience to the Law of Christ.

“What is faith in the Lord God?” was one question in the Catechism.

“It is to know God, to know His word; above all, to love Him, to do His commandments, and to submit to His will.”

“What is faith in Christ?”

“It is to listen to His word, to know Him, to honour Him, to love Him and to join the company of His followers.”[31] And this is the tone all through the Catechism and in all the early writings of the Brethren. As a ship, said Luke, is not made of one plank, so a Christian cannot live on one religious doctrine. The Brethren had no pet doctrines whatever. They had none of the distinctive marks of a sect. They taught their children the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Eight Beatitudes, and the “Six Commandments” of the Sermon on the Mount. They taught the orthodox Catholic doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Birth. They held, they said, the universal Christian faith. They enjoined the children to honour, but not worship, the Virgin Mary and the Saints, and they warned them against the adoration of pictures. If the Brethren had any peculiarity at all, it was not any distinctive doctrine, but rather their insistence on the practical duties of the believer. With Luther, St. Paul’s theology was foremost; with the Brethren (though not denied) it fell into the background. With Luther the favourite court of appeal was St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians; with the Brethren it was rather the Sermon on the Mount and the tender Epistles of St. John.

Again the Brethren differed from Luther in their doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. As this subject was then the fruitful source of much discussion and bloodshed, the Brethren at first endeavoured to avoid the issue at stake by siding with neither of the two great parties and falling back on the simple words of Scripture. “Some say,” they said, “it is only a memorial feast, that Christ simply gave the bread as a memorial. Others say that the bread is really the body of Christ, who is seated at the right hand of God. We reject both these views; they were not taught by Christ Himself. And if anyone asks us to say in what way Christ is present in the sacrament, we reply that we have nothing to say on the subject. We simply believe what He Himself said, and enjoy what He has given.”[32] But this attitude could not last for ever. As the storms of persecution raged against them, the Brethren grew more and more radical in their views. They denied the doctrine of Transubstantiation; they denied also the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation; they denied that the words in St. John’s Gospel about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ had any reference to the Lord’s Supper. They took the whole passage in a purely spiritual sense. If those words, said Bishop Luke, referred to the Sacrament, then all Catholics, except the priests, would be lost; for Catholics only ate the flesh and did not drink the blood, and could, therefore, not possess eternal life. They denied, in a word, that the Holy Communion had any value apart from the faith of the believer; they denounced the adoration of the host as idolatry; and thus they adopted much the same position as Wycliffe in England nearly two hundred years before. The Lord Christ, they said, had three modes of existence. He was present bodily at the right hand of God; He was present spiritually in the heart of every believer; He was present sacramentally, but not personally, in the bread and wine; and, therefore, when the believer knelt in prayer, he must kneel, not to the bread and wine, but only to the exalted Lord in Heaven.

Again, the Brethren differed from Luther in their doctrine of Infant Baptism. If a child, said Luther, was prayed for by the Church, he was thereby cleansed from his unbelief, delivered from the power of the devil, and endowed with faith; and therefore the child was baptised as a believer.[33] The Brethren rejected this teaching. They called it Romish. They held that no child could be a believer until he had been instructed in the faith. They had no belief in baptismal regeneration. With them Infant Baptism had quite a different meaning. It was simply the outward and visible sign of admission to the Church. As soon as the child had been baptised, he belonged to the class of the Beginners, and then, when he was twelve years old, he was taken by his godfather to the minister, examined in his “Questions,” and asked if he would hold true to the faith he had been taught. If he said “Yes!” the minister struck him in the face, to teach him that he would have to suffer for Christ; and then, after further instruction, he was confirmed by the minister, admitted to the communion, and entered the ranks of the Proficient.

Such, then, was the life, and such were the views, of the Bohemian Brethren. What sort of picture does all this bring before us? It is the picture of a body of earnest men, united, not by a common creed, but rather by a common devotion to Christ, a common reverence for Holy Scripture, and a common desire to revive the customs of the early Christian Church.[34] In some of their views they were narrow, in others remarkably broad. In some points they had still much to learn; in others they were far in advance of their times, and anticipated the charitable teaching of the present day.

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A brilliant idea is an excellent thing. A man to work it out is still better. At the very time when Peter’s followers were marshalling their forces, John Rockycana,[5] Archbishop-elect of Prague (since 1448), was making a mighty stir in that drunken city. What Peter had done with his pen, Rockycana was doing with his tongue. He preached Peter’s doctrines in the great Thein Church; he corresponded with him on the burning topics of the day; he went to see him at his estate; he recommended his works to his hearers; and week by week, in fiery language, he denounced the Church of Rome as Babylon, and the Pope as Antichrist himself. His style was vivid and picturesque, his language cutting and clear. One day he compared the Church of Rome to a burned and ruined city, wherein the beasts of the forests made their lairs; and, again, he compared her to a storm-tossed ship, which sank beneath the howling waves because the sailors were fighting each other. “It is better,” he said, “to tie a dog to a pulpit than allow a priest to defile it. It is better, oh, women! for your sons to be hangmen than to be priests; for the hangman only kills the body, while the priest kills the soul. Look there,” he suddenly exclaimed one Sunday, pointing to a picture of St. Peter on the wall, “there is as much difference between the priests of to-day and the twelve apostles as there is between that old painting and the living St. Peter in heaven.[6] For the priests have put the devil into the sacraments themselves, and are leading you straight to the fires of Hell.”

If an eloquent speaker attacks the clergy, he is sure to draw a crowd. No wonder the Thein Church was crammed. No wonder the people listened with delight as he backed up his hot attack with texts from the prophet Jeremiah. No wonder they cried in their simple zeal: “Behold, a second John Hus has arisen.”

But John Rockycana was no second John Hus. For all his fire in the pulpit, he was only a craven at heart. “If a true Christian,” said he to a friend, “were to turn up now in Prague, he would be gaped at like a stag with golden horns.” But he was not a stag with golden horns himself. As he thundered against the Church of Rome, he was seeking, not the Kingdom of God, but his own fame and glory. His followers soon discovered his weakness. Among those who thronged to hear his sermons were certain quiet men of action, who were not content to paw the ground for ever. They were followers of Peter of Chelcic; they passed his pamphlets in secret from hand to hand; they took down notes of Rockycana’s sermons; and now they resolved to practise what they heard. If Peter had taught them nothing else, he had at least convinced them all that the first duty of Christian men was to quit the Church of Rome. Again and again they appealed to Rockycana to be their head, to act up to his words, and to lead them out to the promised land. The great orator hemmed and hawed, put them off with excuses, and told them, after the manner of cowards, that they were too hasty and reckless. “I know you are right,” said he, “but if I joined your ranks I should be reviled on every hand.”[7] But these listeners were not to be cowed. The more they studied Peter’s writings, the more they lost faith in Rockycana. As Rockycana refused to lead them, they left his church in a body, and found a braver leader among themselves. His name was Gregory; he was known as Gregory the Patriarch; and in due time, as we shall see, he became the founder of the Church of the Brethren. He was already a middle-aged man. He was the son of a Bohemian knight, and was nephew to Rockycana himself. He had spent his youth in the Slaven cloister at Prague as a bare-footed monk, had found the cloister not so moral as he had expected, had left it in disgust, and was now well known in Bohemia as a man of sterling character, pious and sensible, humble and strict, active and spirited, a good writer and a good speaker. He was a personal friend of Peter, had studied his works with care, and is said to have been particularly fond of a little essay entitled “The Image of the Beast,” which he had borrowed from a blacksmith in Wachovia. As time went on he lost patience with Rockycana, came into touch with the little societies at Wilenow and Divischau, visited Peter on his estate, and gradually formed the plan of founding an independent society, and thus doing himself what Rockycana was afraid to do. As soldiers desert a cowardly general and rally round the standard of a brave one, so these listeners in the old Thein Church fell away from halting Rockycana, and rallied round Gregory the Patriarch. From all parts of Bohemia, from all ranks of society, from all whom Peter’s writings had touched, from all who were disgusted with the Church of Rome, and who wished to see the True Church of the Apostles bloom in purity and beauty again, from all especially who desired the ministration of priests of moral character—from all these was his little band recruited. How it all happened we know not; but slowly the numbers swelled. At last the terrible question arose: How and where must they live? The question was one of life and death. Not always could they worship in secret; not always be scattered in little groups. It was time, they said, to close their ranks and form an army that should last. “After us,” Rockycana had said in a sermon, “shall a people come well-pleasing unto God and right healthy for men; they shall follow the Scriptures, and the example of Christ and the footsteps of the Apostles.” And these stern men felt called to the holy task.

In the year 1457, Uladislaus Postumus, King of Bohemia, died, and George Podiebrad reigned in his stead; and about the same time it came to the ears of Gregory the Patriarch that in the barony of Senftenberg, on the north-east border of Bohemia, there lay a village that would serve as a home for him and his trusty followers. And the village was called Kunwald, and the old castle hard by was called Lititz. The village was almost deserted, and only a few simple folk, of the same mind as Gregory, lived there now. What better refuge could be found? Gregory the Patriarch laid the scheme before his uncle Rockycana; Rockycana, who sympathized with their views and wished to help them, brought the matter before King George; the King, who owned the estate, gave his gracious permission; and Gregory and his faithful friends wended their way to Kunwald, and there began to form the first settlement of the Church of the Brethren. And now many others from far and wide came to make Kunwald their home. Some came from the Thein Church in Prague, some across the Glatz Hills from Moravia, some from Wilenow, Divischau and Chelcic, some from the Utraquist Church at Königgratz,[8] some, clothed and in their right minds, from those queer folk, the Adamites, and some from little Waldensian groups that lay dotted here and there about the land. There were citizens from Prague and other cities. There were bachelors and masters from the great University. There were peasants and nobles, learned and simple, rich and poor, with their wives and children; and thus did many, who longed to be pure and follow the Master and Him alone, find a Bethany of Peace in the smiling little valley of Kunwald.

Here, then, in the valley of Kunwald, did these pioneers lay the foundation stones of the Moravian Church {1457 or 1458.}.[9] They were all of one heart and one mind. They honoured Christ alone as King; they confessed His laws alone as binding. They were not driven from the Church of Rome; they left of their own free will. They were men of deep religious experience. As they mustered their forces in that quiet dale, they knew that they were parting company from Church and State alike. They had sought the guidance of God in prayer, and declared that their prayers were answered. They had met to seek the truth of God, not from priests, but from God Himself. “As we knew not where to turn,” they wrote to Rockycana, “we turned in prayer to God Himself, and besought Him to reveal to us His gracious will in all things. We wanted to walk in His ways; we wanted instruction in His wisdom; and in His mercy He answered our prayers.” They would rather, they said, spend weeks in gaol than take the oath as councillors. They built cottages, tilled the land, opened workshops, and passed their time in peace and quietness. For a law and a testimony they had the Bible and the writings of Peter of Chelcic. In Michael Bradacius, a Utraquist priest, they found a faithful pastor. They made their own laws and appointed a body of twenty-eight elders to enforce them. They divided themselves into three classes, the Beginners, the Learners and the Perfect;[10] and the Perfect gave up their private property for the good of the common cause. They had overseers to care for the poor. They had priests to administer the sacraments, They had godly laymen to teach the Scriptures. They had visitors to see to the purity of family life. They were shut off from the madding crowd by a narrow gorge, with the Glatz Mountains towering on the one side and the hoary old castle of Lititz, a few miles off, on the other; and there in that fruitful valley, where orchards smiled and gardens bloomed, and neat little cottages peeped out from the woodland, they plied their trades and read their Bibles, and kept themselves pure and unspotted from the world under the eye of God Almighty.[11] But it was not long before these Brethren had to show of what metal they were made. With each other they were at peace, but in Bohemia the sea still rolled from the storm. It is curious how people reasoned in those days. As the Brethren used bread instead of wafer at the Holy Communion, a rumour reached the ears of the King that they were dangerous conspirators, and held secret meetings of a mysterious and unholy nature. And King George held himself an orthodox King, and had sworn to allow no heretics in his kingdom. As soon therefore, as he heard that Gregory the Patriarch had come on a visit to Prague, and was actually holding a meeting of University students in the New Town, he came down upon them like a wolf on the fold, and gave orders to arrest them on the spot. He was sure they were hatching a villainous plot of some kind. In vain some friends sent warning to the students. They resolved, with a few exceptions, to await their fate and stand to their guns. “Come what may,” said they, in their fiery zeal, “let the rack be our breakfast and the funeral pile our dinner!” The door of the room flew open. The magistrate and his bailiffs appeared. “All,” said the magistrate, as he stood at the threshold, “who wish to live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution. Follow me to prison.” They followed him, and were at once stretched upon the rack. As soon as the students felt the pain of torture their courage melted like April snow. After they had tasted the breakfast they had no appetite for the dinner. They went in a body to the Thein Church, mounted the pulpit one by one, pleaded guilty to the charges brought against them, and confessed, before an admiring crowd, their full belief in all the dogmas of the Holy Church of Rome. But for Gregory the Patriarch, who was now growing old, the pain was too severe. His wrists cracked; he swooned, and was thought to be dead, and in his swoon he dreamed a dream which seemed to him like the dreams of the prophets of old. He saw, in a lovely meadow, a tree laden with fruit; the fruit was being plucked by birds; the flights of the birds were guided by a youth of heavenly beauty, and the tree was guarded by three men whose faces he seemed to know. What meant that dream to Gregory and his Brethren? It was a vision of the good time coming. The tree was the Church of the Brethren. The fruit was her Bible teaching. The birds were her ministers and helpers. The youth of radiant beauty was the Divine Master Himself. And the three men who stood on guard were the three men who were afterwards chosen as the first three Elders of the Brethren’s Church.

While Gregory lay in his swoon, his old teacher, his uncle, his sometime friend, John Rockycana, hearing that he was dying, came to see him. His conscience was stricken, his heart bled, and, wringing his hands in agony, he moaned: “Oh, my Gregory, my Gregory, would I were where thou art.” When Gregory recovered, Rockycana pleaded for him, and the King allowed the good old Patriarch to return in peace to Kunwald.

Meanwhile, the first persecution of the Brethren had begun in deadly earnest {1461.}. King George Podiebrad was furious. He issued an order that all his subjects were to join either the Utraquist or the Roman Catholic Church. He issued another order that all priests who conducted the Communion in the blasphemous manner of the Brethren should forthwith be put to death. The priest, old Michael, was cast into a dungeon; four leading Brethren were burned alive; the peaceful home in Kunwald was broken; and the Brethren fled to the woods and mountains. For two full years they lived the life of hunted deer in the forest. As they durst not light a fire by day, they cooked their meals by night; and then, while the enemy dreamed and slept, they read their Bibles by the watch-fires’ glare, and prayed till the blood was dripping from their knees. If provisions ran short, they formed a procession, and marched in single file to the nearest village; and when the snow lay on the ground they trailed behind them a pine-tree branch, so that folk would think a wild beast had been prowling around. We can see them gathering in those Bohemian glades. As the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky, and the night wind kissed the pine trees, they read to each other the golden promise that where two or three were gathered together in His name He would be in the midst of them;[12] and rejoiced that they, the chosen of God, had been called to suffer for the truth and the Church that was yet to be.

In vain they appealed to Rockycana; he had done with them for ever. “Thou art of the world,” they wrote, “and wilt perish with the world.” They were said to have made a covenant with the devil, and were commonly dubbed “Pitmen” because they lived in pits and caves. Yet not for a moment did they lose hope. At the very time when the king in his folly thought they were crushed beneath his foot, they were in reality increasing in numbers every day. As their watch-fires shone in the darkness of the forests, so their pure lives shone among a darkened people. No weapon did they use except the pen. They never retaliated, never rebelled, never took up arms in their own defence, never even appealed to the arm of justice. When smitten on one cheek, they turned the other; and from ill-report they went to good report, till the King for very shame had to let them be. Well aware was he that brutal force could never stamp out spiritual life. “I advise you,” said a certain Bishop, “to shed no more blood. Martyrdom is somewhat like a half-roasted joint of meat, apt to breed maggots.”

And now the time drew near for Gregory’s dream to come true. When the Brethren settled in the valley of Kunwald they had only done half their work. They had quitted the “benighted” Church of Rome; they had not yet put a better Church in her place. They had settled on a Utraquist estate; they were under the protection of a Utraquist King; they attended services conducted by Utraquist priests. But this black-and-white policy could not last for ever. If they wished to be godly men themselves, they must have godly men in the pulpits. What right had they, the chosen of God (as they called themselves) to listen to sermons from men in league with the State? What right had they to take the Holy Bread and Wine from the tainted hands of Utraquist priests? What right had they to confess their sins to men with the brand of Rome upon their foreheads? If they were to have any priests at all, those priests, like Caesar’s wife, must be above suspicion. They must be pastors after God’s own heart, who should feed the people with knowledge and understanding (Jer. iii. 15). They must be clear of any connection with the State. They must be descended from the twelve Apostles. They must be innocent of the crime of simony. They must work with their hands for their living, and be willing to spend their money on the poor. But where could such clean vessels of the Lord be found? For a while the Brethren were almost in despair; for a while they were even half inclined to do without priests at all. In vain they searched the country round; in vain they inquired about priests in foreign lands. When they asked about the pure Nestorian Church supposed to exist in India, they received the answer that that Church was now as corrupt as the Romish. When they asked about the Greek Church in Russia, they received the answer that the Russian Bishops were willing to consecrate any man, good or bad, so long as he paid the fees. The question was pressing. If they did without good priests much longer, they would lose their standing in the country. “You must,” said Brother Martin Lupac, a Utraquist priest, who had joined their ranks, “you must establish a proper order of priests from among yourselves. If you don’t, the whole cause will be ruined. To do without priests is no sin against God; but it is a sin against your fellow-men.” As they pondered on the fateful question, the very light of Heaven itself seemed to flash upon their souls. It was they who possessed the unity of the spirit; and therefore it was they who were called to renew the Church of the Apostles. They had now become a powerful body; they were founding settlements all over the land; they stood, they said, for the truth as it was in Jesus; they had all one faith, one hope, one aim, one sense of the Spirit leading them onward; and they perceived that if they were to weather the gale in those stormy times they must cut the chains that bound them to Rome, and fly their own colours in the breeze.

And so, in 1467, about ten years after the foundation of Kunwald, there met at Lhota a Synod of the Brethren to settle the momentous question {1467.}, “Is it God’s will that we separate entirely from the power of the Papacy, and hence from its priesthood? Is it God’s will that we institute, according to the model of the Primitive Church, a ministerial order of our own?” For weeks they had prayed and fasted day and night. About sixty Brethren arrived. The Synod was held in a tanner’s cottage, under a cedar tree; and the guiding spirit Gregory the Patriarch, for his dream was haunting him still. The cottage has long since gone; but the tree is living yet.

The fateful day arrived. As the morning broke, those sixty men were all on their knees in prayer. If that prayer had been omitted the whole proceedings would have been invalid. As the Master, said they, had prayed on the Mount before he chose His twelve disciples, so they must spend the night in prayer before they chose the elders of the Church. And strange, indeed, their manner of choosing was. First the Synod nominated by ballot nine men of blameless life, from whom were to be chosen, should God so will, the first Pastors of the New Church. Next twelve slips of paper were folded and put into a vase. Of these slips nine were blank, and three were marked “Jest,” the Bohemian for “is.” Then a boy named Procop entered the room, drew out nine slips, and handed them round to the nine nominated Brethren.

There was a hush, a deep hush, in that humble room. All waited for God to speak. The fate of the infant Church seemed to hang in the balance. For the moment the whole great issue at stake depended on the three papers left in the vase. It had been agreed that the three Brethren who received the three inscribed papers should be ordained to the ministry. The situation was curious. As the Brethren rose from their knees that morning they were all as sure as men could be that God desired them to have Pastors of their own; and yet they deliberately ran the risk that the lot might decide against them.[13] What slips were those now lying in the vase? Perhaps the three inscribed ones. But it turned out otherwise. All three were drawn, and Matthias of Kunwald, Thomas of Prelouic, and Elias of Chrenouic, are known to history as the first three ministers of the Brethren’s Church. And then Gregory the Patriarch stepped forward, and announced with trembling voice that these three men were the very three that he had seen in his trance in the torture-chamber at Prague. Not a man in the room was surprised; not a man doubted that here again their prayers had been plainly answered. Together the members of the Synod arose and saluted the chosen three. Together, next day, they sang in a hymn written for the occasion:—

   We needed faithful men, and He
   Granted us such.  Most earnestly,
   We Pray, Lord, let Thy gifts descend,
   That blessing may Thy work attend.[14]
But the battle was not won even yet. If these three good men, now chosen
by Christ, were to be acknowledged as priests in Bohemia, they must
be ordained in the orthodox way by a Bishop of pure descent from the
Apostles. For this purpose they applied to Stephen, a Bishop of the
Waldenses. He was just the man they needed. He was a man of noble
character. He was a man whose word could be trusted. He had often given
them information about the Waldensian line of Bishops. He had told them
how that line ran back to the days of the early Church. He had told them
how the Waldensian Bishops had kept the ancient faith unsullied, and had
never broken the law of Christ by uniting with the wicked State. To
that line of Bishops he himself belonged. He had no connection with the
Church of Rome, and no connection with the State. What purer orders,
thought the Brethren, could they desire? They believed his statements;
they trusted his honour; they admired his personal character; and now
they sent old Michael Bradacius to see him in South Moravia and to lay
their case before him. The old Bishop shed tears of joy. "He laid his
hand on my head," says Michael, "and consecrated me a Bishop." Forthwith
the new Bishop returned to Lhota, ordained the chosen three as Priests,
and consecrated Matthias of Kunwald a Bishop. And thus arose those
Episcopal Orders which have been maintained in the Church of the
Brethren down to the present day.

The goal was reached; the Church was founded; the work of Gregory was done. For twenty years he had taught his Brethren to study the mind of Christ in the Scriptures and to seek the guidance of God in united prayer, and now he saw them joined as one to face the rising storm.

“Henceforth,” he wrote gladly to King George Podiebrad, “we have done with the Church of Rome.” As he saw the evening of life draw near, he urged his Brethren more and more to hold fast the teaching of Peter of Chelcic, and to regulate their daily conduct by the law of Christ; and by that law of Christ he probably meant the “Six Commandments” of the Sermon on the Mount.[15] He took these Commandments literally, and enforced them with a rod of iron. No Brother could be a judge or magistrate or councillor. No Brother could take an oath or keep an inn, or trade beyond the barest needs of life. No noble, unless he laid down his rank, could become a Brother at all. No peasant could render military service or act as a bailiff on a farm. No Brother could ever divorce his wife or take an action at law. As long as Gregory remained in their midst, the Brethren held true to him as their leader. He had not, says Gindely, a single trace of personal ambition in his nature; and, though he might have become a Bishop, he remained a layman to the end. Full of years he died, and his bones repose in a cleft where tufts of forget-me-not grow, at Brandeis-on-the-Adler, hard by the Moravian frontier {Sept.13th, 1473.}.